SOME OF CHRISTIANITY’S BIGGEST MYTHS ARE ZOROASTRIAN

First, recall, that the Jews spent considerable time in Persian exile, in Babylonia, and that prior to that time, they did not have ideas of good versus evil or of a Satanic figure which causes evil and etcetera, then read the following:

“The actual mythology of the Persians, on the other hand, was not of Isaiah, but of Zarathustra (Greek, Zoroaster); and since it was to exert considerable influence not only on Judaism, but also on the whole development of Christianity, we shall do well to pause with it a moment before proceeding in our survey to the mythologies of peace.

“The World Creator, according to this view, was Ahura Mazda, a god of truth and light, whose original creation was perfect. However, an opposing evil power of darkness and deception, Angra Mainyu, infused into it evils of all kinds, so that there occurred a general Fall into ignorance and there is in progress now a continuing conflict between the powers of light and of darkness, truth and deception. These, in the Persian view, are not particular to any race or tribe but are cosmic, general powers, and every individual, of whatever race or tribe, must, through his own free will, choose sides and align himself with the powers either of goodness or of evil in this world. If with the former, he will contribute through his thoughts, words, and deeds to the restoration of the universe to perfection; if however, with the latter, to his own great grief in a Hell appropriate to his life.

“As the day of the ultimate world-victory approaches and the powers of darkness make their final desperate stand, there will come a season of general wars and universal catastrophe, after which there will arrive the ultimate savior, Saoshyant. Angra Mainyu and his demons will be utterly undone; the dead will be resurrected in bodies of immaculate light; Hell vanishing, its souls, purified, will be released; and there will follow an eviternity of sheer peace, purity, joy, and perfection—forever.

“According to the view of the ancient Persian kings, it was they who, in a special way, were the representatives on earth of the cause and will of the Lord of Light. And so we find that in the great multiracial and multicultural empire of the Persians—which, in fact, was the first such empire in the history of the world— there was a religiously authorized imperialistic impulse, to the end that, in the name of truth, goodness, and the light, the Persian King of Kings should become the leader of mankind to the restitution of truth. The idea is one that has had a particular appeal to kings and has been taken over, accordingly, by conquering monarchs everywhere. In India the mythic image of the Chakravartin, for example, the universal king, the illumination of whose presence would bring peace and well-being to mankind, is a figure inspired largely by this thought. It is to be recognized in the royal emblems of the first Buddhist monarch, Ashoka, ca. 262—248 a.c. And in China, immediately following the turbulent period known as Chun Kuo, “of the Warring States,” the first ruler of a united empire, Shih Huang Ti (221—207 B.c.), governed, according to his claim, by the mandate of Heaven, under Heaven’s law.

“It is then hardly to be wondered if the enthusiastic Hebrew author of Isaiah 40—55, who was a contemporary of Cyrus the Great and living witness of the Persian restoration to Jerusalem of its people, gives evidence in his prophecies of the influence of Zoroastrian ideas; for example, in the famous passages of Chapter 45: “Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus . . . ‘I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the Lord, who do all these things.’” It is in these chapters of the so-called Second or Deutero Isaiah that we find the earliest celebrations of Yahweh not simply as the greatest and most powerful god among gods, but as the one God of the universe, in whom not only Jews but also the gentiles are to find salvation: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth!” we read, for instance. “For I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22). Moreover, whereas the earlier idea of the Messiah of the pre-exilic prophets had been simply of an ideal king on David’s throne, “to uphold it,” as in Isaiah 9:6—7, “with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and for evermore”; in the post-exilic period, and particularly in the very late, apocalyptic writings of the Alexandrian age—as, for instance, in the Book of Daniel 7:13-27—there is the notion of one who, at the end of historic time, should be given, over “all peoples, nations, and languages,” “an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away.” And at that time, furthermore, “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2).

“There can be no doubt of the influence of Zoroastrian eschatology on such ideas as these of the end of the world and resurrection of the dead. Moreover, in the Essene Dead Sea Scrolls of the last century B.C., the influence of Persian thought is apparent at every turn. Their period itself, in fact, was one of such terrible tumult that the end of the world and coming of the savior Saoshyant might well have been expected by anyone familiar with the old Zoroastrian theme....” (MYTHS TO LIVE BY, Joseph Campbell, pp. 188-190)

These undeniable historical truths reveal just how much Christianity is not some original plan of the Universe cooked up by some sole puppet maker in the sky, but just one tale and piece of the entire mythological range of ideas of the times from which it emerged and by which it was altered and changed again and again. These tales disappear back into prehistory, change upon change, altering with the fortunes of the humans who believed in them. Christianity is a myth just like the other myths which preceded it and which followed it and will follow modern Christianity. For instance, I’d say that any honest man must conclude that the Christians of today are not the least like the Christians of the past and that those early Zoroastrian/Christians would be appalled by the beliefs of modern Christians, even the most evangelical of our modern Bible-beaters. This awareness of its roots being in other more ancient religious traditions alone should undermine any Judeo-Christian belief in some eternal god who lives up in the sky, like some modern day Zeus. Most honest Christians would have to admit by the evidence that they are part Zoroastrian and part Essene and part Christian. Otherwise, they deny their history and the real truths of their Bible tales.
__________________________________________________

“Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life.” —Robert Byrne

BUSH AND THE HOLY GRAIL

Bush likes to call his deeds in the Holy Land a "Crusade" which just goes to show how far outside of our modern time zone he and his Christian backers in America govern from. And, in another throwback to ancient, superstitious times, Bush likes to think the voice in his head is a god's voice, speaking personally to him and not to the rest of us (that's opposed to Sam's voice which another famous lunatic heard). Frankly I don't hear voices, and when I do, I know myself well enough to know that the voices inside my own skull are the voices of my own thinking which I then take responsibility for. It kind of scares me that Bush doesn't know the difference. Most people with his condition are pretty well sedated, but, then, you can't lead the Republican party under the heavy dose of sedation Bush would require. Can you see what Bush's obvious insanity implies about the Republican Party's leadership that can follow a madman? Makes me think of Nazi Germany.

Actually, the one real situation that Bush is responsible for is the loss of traditional democratic values that allowed American blue collar workers to prosper. Current conditions for the average American seem an awfully lot like the conditions of peasants in the corrupt, medieval, ecclesiastical culture from which grew the tales of Tristan and the search for the Holy Grail in, as Campbell says it, "a land torn between honor and love." Bush holds up all the duty and honor braggadocio, with a lot of church mixed unconstitutionally in, while those of us who are real people hold up the troubadour's painful love end. What we Americans (those who are still sane) really have beneath our loamy feet is a land owned and operated by BIG BUSINESS CHURCH just as in Tristan's time it was owned and operated by BIG MOTHER CHURCH...

Joseph Campbell, unbeknownst to himself, has described America's current corrupt condition under Bush's Republican leadership in yet another passage from (MYTHS TO LIVE BY, p. 167): "Every natural impulse in that period of ecclesiastical despotism was branded as corrupt, with the only recognized means of 'redemption' vested in sacraments administered by authorities who were themselves indeed corrupt. People were forced to profess and live by beliefs they did not always actually hold. The imposed moral order held precedence over the claims of both truth and love. The pains of Hell were illustrated on earth in the torture of adulteresses, heretics, and other villains, torn apart or set afire in public squares. And all hope of anything better was pitched high aloft to that celestial estate of which Gottfried spoke with such scorn, where those who could bear neither grief nor desire were to be bathed in a bliss everlasting."


SATAN SO LOVED HIS GOD THAT HE WENT TO HELL FOR LOVE

Joseph Campbell relates a marvelous Persian tale about a Satan (probably the idea of Satan which the Habiru borrowed for their own mythology) who so loved his god that he couldn't obey god's command to bow down in worship to the humans he'd created. Thus, Satan goes to hell for loving god too much. Now there's a real puritanical twist on love for you.

Read it and weep. (MYTHS TO LIVE BY, pp. 152-153):

"One of the most amazing images of love that I know is Persian—a mystical Persian representation of Satan as the most loyal lover of God. You will have heard the old legend of how, when God created the angels, he commanded them to pay worship to no one but himself; but then, creating man, he commanded them to bow in reverence to this most noble of his works, and Lucifer refused because, we are told, of his pride. However, according to this Moslem reading of his case, it was rather because he loved and adored God so deeply and intensely that he could not bring himself to bow before anything else. And it was for that that he was flung into Hell, condemned to exist there forever, apart from his love.

"Now it has been said that of all the pains of Hell, the worst is neither fire nor stench but the deprivation forever of the beatific sight of God. How infinitely painful, then, must the exile of this great lover be, who could not bring himself, even on God’s own word, to bow before any other being!

"The Persian poets have asked, 'By what power is Satan sustained?' And the answer that they have found is this: 'By his memory of the sound of God’s voice when he said, ‘Be gone!’ What an image of that exquisite spiritual agony which is at once the rapture and the anguish of love!

Another lesson from Persia is in the life and words of the great Sufi mystic Hallaj, who in the year 922 was tortured and crucified for having declared that he and his Beloved—namely God—were one. He had compared his love for God with that of the moth for the flame. The moth plays about the lighted lamp till dawn, and, returning with battered wings to its friends, tells of the beautiful thing it found; then, desiring to be joined to it entirely, flying into the flame the next night, becomes one with it."


As an atheist and writer, I can't tell you how appealing and satisfying I find that mythological tale to be. The writers who most influenced me in my youth were the more mysterious writers, the ones who were less meat and potatoes and more symbolic, existentialist or absurdist—anything but straight forward narrativists (ps: I think I made up a perfectly nice word there). So though I now find most superstition abhorrent, I can still partake of the magic of imaginative writing with an open heart. Also, by reading this tale and knowing that it is made up and not of the Bible, I can add one more link to the proofs that most of the Bible is made up too. There, in Persia, the Bible myths lived also, in the imaginations of humankind outside the Bible.


DON'T MISS THIS SHOW

"Bush's Brain: A Documentary About Karl Rove"

"'Bush's Brain' has been cracked open and exposed for the world to see. we
learn that Rove had his eye on the White House long before Bush ever did."
—Christy Lemire, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

"Karl Rove. Hard to find a more compelling documentary subject: the
Svengaliesque, ruthless, remorseless, cold-blooded but brilliant political
puppet master whom many credit with masterminding not only George W.'s
improbable ascent to the governorship—and, even more improbably, to the
presidency—but also with the end of bipartisan government itself." —Anne
S. Lewis, AUSTIN CHRONICLE

"BUSH'S BRAIN—is sure to be one of the most explosive documentaries about
American politics in a decade." —Nancy Shafer, TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change
the world: indeed it's the only thing that ever has." —Margaret Mead, Anthropologist

FARMER/RANCHER SUICIDAL BOO HOOS CAUSED BY LOSS OF MOO MOO MOOLA

Thanks to Cliff “Ahem” Smith for the information which informs the following tale of mud and guts.

Eric Schlosser reports in his book, FAST FOOD NATION, that the nation’s fast food empires like McDonald’s are one more of the pressures destroying family farms and ranches by helping to grow agribusiness. “Small towns are now being turned into rural ghettos. The USA now has more prison inmates than full-time farmers.” Whether or not the loss of family farms is the cause, Schlosser says, “The suicide rate among ranchers and farmers in the USA is now about 3 times higher than the national average.” Now, now, now, Schlosser, don’t get carried away.

Not to be unkind, but some of that rural suicide rate, if you ask me, is because farmers and ranchers continue to live in the world that George Bush paints as real, refusing to modernize their thinking. They voted for him (and against themselves) because they bought the idea that he still believes in 19th century America. Bush saws them in half by pretending he cares about the little guy while doing everything in his power to make the average working stiff totally subservient to Bush’s big business buddies. Bush plays them like fish in a barrel, running them around the edges of their cage and teasing them into his net. Whack, off go their heads, and he guts them. Their guts spilled out on tables, they’re ready to die. Come on, rural America, if you follow that Pied Piper, you’ll die with the rats. If you follow the evangelist, he’ll chum you like so much fish guts. The following poem is about sucker bait. I wrote it years ago as I left my foolish past behind.


THE EVANGELIST

resisting
his way to surface
air alive with death
chopping block
offering of flesh cut open
the cleaver
aimed to just behind the gills
mouth
works a silent something

from water
to unfamiliar air
hooked
brought gasping chopped and cut
his song of water in the guts
spills out

guts
returned as chum slick on the water
one eye staring glazes up

by George


EARLY SUPPORT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL (i.e. BEFORE REAL SCIENCE)

Speaking of a gut full of pain—Steven Pinker discusses why some people have way too much soul and not enough sense. In his talk before the membership of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (October 29, 2004), Pinker explained some of the conclusions that people might have reasoned to by pure supposition, given the state of science in the earlier days of the human race. Steven Pinker is a scientist and author of several important books in neuroscience, including his most recent, The Blank Slate: The modern denial of human nature. The following is excerpted from Steven Pinker’s talk at the annual convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation:

“In fact, the l9th-century anthropol-ogist Edward Tyler pointed out that in some ways, there is good empirical support for the existence of the soul, or at least there used to be, until the fairly recent advent of neuroscience, which provides an alternative explanation for how minds work. Think about dreams. When you dream, your body is in bed the whole time, but some part of you seems to be up and about in the world. The same thing happens when you're in a trance from a fever, a hallucinogenic drug, sleep deprivation, or food poisoning.

“Shadows and reflections are rather mysterious, or were until the develop-ment of the physics of light with its explanation of those phenomena. But they appear to have the form and essence of the person but without any of their actual matter.

“Death, of course, is the ultimate apparent evidence for the existence of the soul. A person may walking around and seeing and hearing one minute and the next minute be an inert and lifeless body, perhaps without any visible change. It would seem that some animating entity that was housed in the body has suddenly escaped from it.

“So before the advent of modern physics, biology and specially neuroscience, a plausible explanation of these phenomena is that the soul wan-ders off when we sleep, lurks in the shadows, looks back at us from a surface of a pond, and leaves the body when we die.”

Some people are still stuck way back then.


ETHICS PUT OFF AS DELAY AND DELAY TRIES TO SAVE CROOKED DELAY

Speaking of a real Bushman evangelist with the accompanying set of morals:

“The House majority leader, Tom DeLay, is facing new ethical questions after the disclosure that a timely infusion of gambling-lobby money helped underwrite a golf junket to Scotland in 2000. Intrigued taxpayers should expect no investigation, however, because Speaker Dennis Hastert stripped the House ethics committee of power this year in a blatant move to shield Mr. DeLay from scrutiny.”

You didn’t expect these guys who went after Clinton no holds barred to be honest themselves did you? Here's the whole story.

LET’S NOT BLESS THE POPE EVEN THOUGH HE NEEDS IT

The following is a press release by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, telling it as it is about the Pope. I gave him the credit for finally admitting the church was wrong about Galileo and, more importantly, for his accepting the facts about natural selection. His acceptance of natural selection is even more important because we know that he had to have carefully done his research before giving the go ahead to evolution. Which means that many many Catholic scientists must have contributed to his decision. That means a lot of Catholics will have to listen more closely to the science of the modern world.

FFRF News Release
April 4, 2005

Setting the Record Straight: The Pope Has No Vestments

The public is being treated to fawning eulogies, blow-by-blow descriptions of Catholic rites and rituals, and uncritical propaganda following the April 2 death of the pope.

Has there ever been anything like this media adulation? Whole front news sections were devoted yesterday to "His Holiness," as if the whole world were Catholic. It is hard to imagine the death of any world leader summoning the same kind of uncritical coverage, with the possible exception of an assassinated U.S. President. Former Pres. Reagan's death last summer certainly rated nothing like this.

Pope John Paul II: Superstar? He might have been called a great leader . . . if he had lived in the fifth century, as Catholic renegade Frances Kissling likes to quip. This pope always had at least one foot in the Dark Ages.

If one adds up the good versus the evil committed by the pope, there is no question he has done far more harm than good. The pope, given his visibility, had the power to transform the world for the better. But he chose instead to reiterate cruel medieval cant. With a few words, he could have moved the world forward, revoking the senseless Church doctrine against the use of contraception, abortion and sterilization that causes such acute misery, overpopulation and degradation of humanity.

Had he lifted even just the ban on the use of condoms to prevent transmission of AIDS, think of the tragedies that could have been spared! He didn't just want to ram church doctrine down the throats of reluctant members of his own congregation, but upon the rest of us. Sure, he finally admitted Galileo should not have been condemned by the Church—some 350 years too late. The pope is being given great credit for international diplomacy, while it is being forgotten he put the kibosh on "liberation theology...." True, he opposed capital punishment as most freethinkers do. But think of the capital punishment, the slaughters, the witch-burnings, purges, tortures and inquisitions committed by the Roman Catholic Church and its followers throughout history.

Examine just a sampling of his patriarchal legacy.

Abortion. Over and over, the Pope has mercilessly condemned legal abortion, even in cases of rape or to save the pregnant woman's life. He and his church lobby in this country (tax-free) and worldwide to overturn abortion where it is legal, and to keep it back-alley where it is not, contributing to the unnecessary deaths of thousands of women every year and the despair of their families.

A Catholic war is being waged against reproductive rights, as exemplified by the Catholic interference in Nicaragua two years ago when authorities attempted to stop a 9 year old rape victim from having an abortion.

Abortion, the pope said, is always a "crime," which he compared to the Nazi Holocaust. The Catholic Church would turn the clock back worldwide if it had its way. Its dedication to halting choice for women poses an imminent threat to the health and lives of half the world's human inhabitants.

Contraception. You would think those who oppose abortion would be the first to promote responsible use of contraception to avoid unwanted conception. But that would require thinking instead of pontificating. In the United States, the Bush Administration is now insidiously doing business with the Catholic Church in some of its insurance plans offered to federal workers, whereby workers opt out of the right to any reproductive healthcare that is against the policies of the Catholic Church. Imagine if church doctrine were the rule of law for all! It would be worse than
Margaret Atwood's vision of theocracy in The HANDMAID’S TALE.

Sterilization. Sterilization is one of the most popular methods of birth control in the United States. Yet it is still hard to obtain in many parts of the country that are served only by Catholic hospitals or in which public hospitals have entered into unethical partnerships with Catholic institutions.

Gay rights and gay marriage. In 2003, the Vatican launched a vicious global campaign against civil recognition of gay unions. The Pope, in his 12-page July 2003 guidelines, referred to gay rights as the "new ideology of evil," and said it would do "violence" to allow a gay couple to adopt. This head of a sect which has engaged in conspiracy and collusion to shield predator priests accused of pedophilia, dared to call homosexuality a "grave depravity," and said that it is gays who are in need of psychiatric treatment. He ordered Catholic politicians to oppose any legal recognition of "homosexual unions."

Church sex scandal. This pope, who was incessantly publishing lengthy scribes and books, strangely issued only one real statement on the scandal of predator priests, a short homily on April 23, 2002. He indicated the Church's continued belief in "salvation" and "forgiveness" as the way to treat priestly pedophilia and said, breathtakingly, of criminal priests: "A great work of art may be blemished, but its beauty remains." The Vatican had previously issued secret rules ordering that accused priests be tried in secret church courts overseen from Rome, without
advising whether civil authorities should be informed if a priest was found guilty. The Vatican continually deflects blame from the church by mis-equating homosexuality with pedophilia.

Spiritual extortion. The Vatican stranglehold over Catholics greatly increased under John Paul's sway. The Vatican recently told Catholic politicians worldwide that they may not vote contrary to any Catholic dogma, such as for abortion, for death with dignity or for gay rights. Some US bishops have told Catholic politicians they will be denied communion if they vote against papal line. This power grab is a menace to American civil liberties, since Roman Catholicism is the single largest U.S. denomination, and Catholics dominate Congress and many state houses.

Women's rights. Year after tiresome year since 1978, the Pope has told women that men only are made in the image of Christ and women were made to be breeders. Despite a shortage of priests, women may not become priests, and are such polluters of piety that male priests may not marry them. The media universally have treated these demeaning bromides as significant "news." Even now, as men in skirts plot the course of the church, where is the outrage by media, not to mention Catholic women, over the church's "male only" doctrines and other papal bull?

Divorce. Still not allowed, however ignored by the faithful in the parts of the world lucky enough not to be under Catholic dictates over civil law.

Stem cell research. Evil--even though the only hope of medical breakthroughs to help people (such as the Pope) suffering from ailments such as Parkinson's disease, is via such research. Ironically, the World's Number One Celibate also condemned in vitro fertilization, at the same time condemning married couples who decide to stay childfree.

Death with dignity. That, too is an official "crime." The Pope himself was spared the kind of slow death or endless limbo he wished upon people such asTerri Schiavo. Just last year (in a speech before the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, March 20, 2004), the pope proclaimed that feeding tubes should never be removed, regardless of hope of recovery or the patient's wishes. Food and water, he said, must be forced upon terminal or hopeless cases. Just a few weeks ago, he had the temerity to label as "murderers" those who sought to remove Schiavo's feeding tube. The Pope lucked out, and died—before he could become a victim of his own pronunciamento.

The pope's reversal of hundreds of years of church doctrine on dying places at jeopardy our rights. Might the rest of us be denied our last wishes by Catholic healthcare providers—or by institutions or politicians fearful of challenging the power of the Catholic Church?

How will our civilization ever advance when the media and politicians. . . insist on whitewashing history and revering a frontispiece for one of the planet's most regressive, despotic, corrupt, autocratic, undemocratic, inegalitarian and superstitious religions?

The best to be said about Pope John Paul II is that his successor will likely be worse.

Pray, n. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single practitioner confessedly unworthy. —Ambrose Bierce

................................................................
This E-News is courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, PO Box 750, Madison WI 53701.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics) working to keep church and state separate since 1978. For more information, go to this place.

TOM DELAY IS A LOUSY TEXAS CROOK

I think it should be noted that Delay, like LBJ and Bushes Jr. and Sr., is from Texas. Texas is not the sort of state where democratic principles are a guiding light. Just because the southwestern states were slow to come into the union doesn’t give them license to ignore democracy, start wars and dream of empire. We need to get a president from the northeast U.S. Up there, they've been practicing the art of democracy far longer than these western boys. They’ve got a nack for it.

All the information following is quoted directly from information supplied by the DNC:


Meet Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), the man Republicans have chosen as their Majority Leader in the House of Representatives.

Tom DeLay is at the center of a bewildering array of investigations into corruption, abuse of power, and ethics violations.

As the courts and committees investigate DeLay's misdeeds and hand down indictments, keeping track of all the scandals can be a full-time job. So we thought it would helpful to offer folks this quick and easy guide.

The Westar Scandal    

In 2002, executives at Kansas energy company Westar wrote a memo outlining how they could purchase a "seat at the table" with $56,500 in contributions to political committees associated with Tom DeLay and the GOP. DeLay was later admonished by the House Ethics Committee for creating the appearance of impropriety.

The House Medicare Vote Bribery Scandal    

Tom DeLay and the Republican leadership kept open the vote for the Medicare bill for three hours -- long past the 15 minutes specified in House procedures -- in order to pressure Republicans to vote for the bill. Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI) said GOP leaders offered "bribes and special deals," leading to an investigation by the Ethics Committee, which admonished DeLay.

The Texas Redistricting Scandal    

When DeLay and his fellow Republicans were redrawing the Congressional districts in Texas to push Democrats out of the House, he used the Federal Aviation Administration to try and track a plane containing Democratic state legislators. The House Ethics Committee investigated DeLay's actions and once again admonished him.

The K Street Scandal      

Tom DeLay has pushed lobbying firms to deny jobs to Democrats, and hire only Republicans, resulting in another Ethics Committee admonishment for inappropriately pushing a lobbying firm to hire a former GOP congressman. DeLay has pressured GOP lobbyists to make contributions to Republican candidates and the RNC.

The TRMPAC Scandal      

In Texas, it's illegal for corporations to make donations to fund political campaigns. So Tom DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee (TRMPAC) took $190,000 in corporate contributions and funneled them to the RNC, which then donated exactly $190,000 to TRMPAC-supported candidates. DeLay and TRMPAC are currently under investigation by a grand jury.

The Travel Scandal    

An investigation by the Justice Department showed that Tom DeLay accepted a trip financed by the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, breaking House rules that prohibit accepting travel expenses from "a registered lobbyist or agent of a foreign principal."

The Ethics Committee Scandal    

Knowing that he faced investigation for a growing pile of scandals, Tom DeLay and the GOP House leadership purged the Ethics Committee of Republicans -- including Chairman Joel Hefley (R-CO) -- who weren't willing to overlook charges against DeLay, replacing them with members loyal to the leadership. They then changed the Committee rules to make it more difficult to begin investigations. Democrats on the Committee have refused to take any action in protest until the rules are restored.
===================================================

“Speech was given to man to enable him to conceal his thoughts.” —Malagriada, S.J.

RELIGION ALL IN THE MIND, SUGGESTS STEVEN PINKER

According to Steven Pinker, there are several emotional reasons for projecting a spiritual dimension into the world (he lists them in a lecture given before a meeting of the Freedom From Religion Foundation), but, he says, “… there also are cognitive predispositions, ways in which we intellectually analyze the world, which have been very skillfully explored by the anthropologists Dan Sperber, Pascal Boyer, and Scott Atrans. Anyone who is interested in the evolutionary psychology of religion would enjoy Pascal Boyer's RELIGION EXPLAINED and Scott Atran's IN GODS WE TRUST. Hamer's THE GOD GENE is also good, but I am more sympathetic to Boyer and Atran.

“The starting point is a faculty of human reason that psychologists call intuitive psychology or the ‘theory of mind module’—‘theory’ here not referring to a theory of the scientist but rather to the intuitive theory that people unconsciously deploy in making sense of other people's behavior. When I try to figure out what someone is going to do, I don't treat them as just a robot or a wind-up doll responding to physical stimuli in the world. Rather, I impute minds to those people.

“I can't literally know what someone else is thinking or feeling, but I assume that they're thinking or feeling something, that they have a mind, and I explain their behavior in terms of their beliefs and their desires. That's intuitive psychology. There is evidence that intuitive psychology is a distinct part of our psychological makeup. It seems to be knocked out in a condition called autism: autistic people can be prodigious in mathematics, art, language, and music, but they have a terrible time attributing minds to other people. They really do treat other people as if they were wind-up dolls. There's also a concerted effort underway to see where intuitive psychology is computed in the brain. Part of it seems to be concentrated in the ventromedial and orbital frontal cortex, the parts of the brain that kind of sit above the eyeballs, as well as the superior temporal sulcus farther back.

“Perhaps the ubiquitous belief in spirits, souls, gods, angels, and so on consists of our intuitive psychology running amok. If you are prone to attributing an invisible entity called "the mind'' to other people's bodies, it's a short step to imagining minds that exist independently of bodies. After all, it's not as it you could reach out and touch someone else's mind; you are always making an inferential leap. It's just one extra inferential step to say that a mind is not invariably housed in a body.” (From a Pinker speech recorded in the Jan/Feb 2005 issue of FREETHOUGHT TODAY newspaper, page 8)


MORALITY—A GAME OF ONE-UPS-MAN-SHIP, ANOTHER HOUSE OF CARDS???

So if the spiritual world is nothing more than a trick of intuition, perhaps morals might be nothing more than another psychological mechanism for keeping the pecking order in play in the supposedly rational herd of humankind. My reading in Dawes’s HOUSE OF CARDS (p. 208) brought me across the idea of “spatial paralogic” which is the habit of the human mind to make abstract hierarchies within the mind out of non-material values and concepts. People speak of improving themselves, getting better (according to what concrete standard, we should ask?). People speak of growing mentally and spiritually. What concrete yardstick are they putting themselves up against to measure their spiritual growth? That’s “spatial paralogic” in action—to imagine a hierarchy of value in the mind for abstract qualities that don’t have physical dimensions.

The human mind seems prone to create these hierarchies of values and life qualities in order to judge or evaluate itself and others. This, of course, enmeshes the self in the life of the culture against which one tests himself and his friends and acquaintances. I see evolution in this, our biological nature expressed as we try to find our place in the cultural hierarchy so that we can make allies and find mates. Values, judging and self-judging, and the resulting status in our minds and the minds of our acquaintances, are a human’s way of placing himself in relation to others. Thus we can’t help judging one another and ourselves because we are animals seeking a higher place among our fellows. We scramble among ourselves, pretending to be better than the other monkeys in the group, testing our moral strengths against one another. Let me try another way of saying it: spatial paralogic is a human psychological mechanism for seeking our and other’s values (i.e. “ranking) in the pecking order of the human herd.
__________________________________________________________

"If the shoe fits, you're not allowing for growth." —Robert N. Coons

Americans United for Separation of Church and State—AU.org

[Brochure]
Is America A 'Christian Nation'?

Religion, Government And Individual Freedom

Is the United States a "Christian nation"? Some Americans think so. Religious Right activists and right-wing television preachers often claim that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation. Even some politicians agree. If the people who make this assertion are merely saying that most Americans are Christians, they might have a point. But those who argue that America is a Christian nation usually mean something more, insisting that the country should be officially Christian. The very character of our country is at stake in the outcome of this debate.

Religious Right groups and their allies insist that the United States was designed to be officially Christian and that our laws should enforce the doctrines of (their version of) Christianity. Is this viewpoint accurate? Is there anything in the Constitution that gives special treatment or preference to Christianity? Did the founders of our government believe this or intend to create a government that gave special recognition to Christianity?

The answer to all of these questions is no. The U.S. Constitution is a wholly secular document. It contains no mention of Christianity or Jesus Christ. In fact, the Constitution refers to religion only twice in the First Amendment, which bars laws "respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," and in Article VI, which prohibits "religious tests" for public office. Both of these provisions are evidence that the country was not founded as officially Christian.

The Founding Fathers did not create a secular government because they disliked religion. Many were believers themselves. Yet they were well aware of the dangers of church-state union. They had studied and even seen first-hand the difficulties that church-state partnerships spawned in Europe. During the American colonial period, alliances between religion and government produced oppression and tyranny on our own shores.

Many colonies, for example, had provisions limiting public office to "Trinitarian Protestants" and other types of laws designed to prop up the religious sentiments of the politically powerful. Some colonies had officially established churches and taxed all citizens to support them, whether they were members or not. Dissenters faced imprisonment, torture and even death.

These arrangements led to bitterness and sectarian division. Many people began agitating for an end to "religious tests" for public office, tax subsidies for churches and other forms of state endorsement of religion. Those who led this charge were not anti-religion. Indeed, many were members of the clergy and people of deep piety. They argued that true faith did not need or want the support of government.

Respect for religious pluralism gradually became the norm. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, for example, he spoke of "unalienable rights endowed by our Creator." He used generic religious language that all religious groups of the day would respond to, not narrowly Christian language traditionally employed by nations with state churches.

While some of the country's founders believed that the government should espouse Christianity, that viewpoint soon became a losing proposition. In Virginia, Patrick Henry argued in favor of tax support for Christian churches. But Henry and his cohorts were in the minority and lost that battle. Jefferson, James Madison and their allies among the state's religious groups ended Virginia's established church and helped pass the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty, a 1786 law guaranteeing religious freedom to all.

Jefferson and Madison's viewpoint also carried the day when the Constitution, and later, the Bill of Rights, were written. Had an officially Christian nation been the goal of the founders, that concept would appear in the Constitution. It does not. Instead, our nation's governing document ensures religious freedom for everyone.

Maryland representative Luther Martin said that a handful of delegates to the Constitutional Convention argued for formal recognition of Christianity in the Constitution, insisting that such language was necessary in order to "hold out some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism." But that view was not adopted, and the Constitution gave government no authority over religion. Article VI, which allows persons of all religious viewpoints to hold public office, was adopted by a unanimous vote. Through ratification of the First Amendment, observed Jefferson, the American people built a "wall of separation between church and state."

Some pastors who favored church-state union were outraged and delivered sermons asserting that the United States would not be a successful nation because its Constitution did not give special treatment to Christianity. But many others welcomed the new dawn of freedom and praised the Constitution and the First Amendment as true protectors of liberty.

Early national leaders understood that separation of church and state would be good for all faiths including Christianity. Jefferson rejoiced that Virginia had passed his religious freedom law, noting that it would ensure religious freedom for "the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, the infidel of every denomination."

Other early U.S. leaders echoed that view. President George Washington, in a famous 1790 letter to a Jewish congregation in Newport, R.I., celebrated the fact that Jews had full freedom of worship in America. Noted Washington, "All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship."

Washington's administration even negotiated a treaty with the Muslim rulers of north Africa that stated explicitly that the United States was not founded on Christianity. The pact, known as the Treaty with Tripoli, was approved unanimously by the Senate in 1797, under the administration of John Adams. Article 11 of the treaty states, "[T]he government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…."

Admittedly, the U.S. government has not always lived up to its constitutional principles. In the late 19th century especially, officials often promoted a de facto form of Protestantism. Even the U.S. Supreme Court fell victim to this mentality in 1892, with Justice David Brewer declaring in Holy Trinity v. United States that America is "a Christian nation."

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion….

- U.S. Treaty with Tripoli, 1797

It should be noted, however, that the Holy Trinity decision is a legal anomaly. It has rarely been cited by other courts, and the "Christian nation" declaration appeared in dicta a legal term meaning writing that reflects a judge's personal opinion, not a mandate of the law. Also, it is unclear exactly what Brewer meant. In a book he wrote in 1905, Brewer pointed out that the United States is Christian in a cultural sense, not a legal one.

A more accurate judicial view of the relationship between religion and government is described by Justice John Paul Stevens in his 1985 Wallace v. Jaffree ruling. Commenting on the constitutional right of all Americans to choose their own religious belief, Stevens wrote, "At one time it was thought that this right merely proscribed the preference of one Christian sect over another, but would not require equal respect for the conscience of the infidel, the atheist, or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Mohammedism or Judaism. But when the underlying principle has been examined in the crucible of litigation, the Court has unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all."

A determined faction of Christians has fought against this wise and time-tested policy throughout our history. In the mid 19th century, several efforts were made to add specific references to Christianity to the Constitution. One group, the National Reform Association (NRA), pushed a "Christian nation" amendment in Congress in 1864. NRA members believed that the Civil War was divine punishment for failing to mention God in the Constitution and saw the amendment as a way to atone for that omission.

The NRA amendment called for "humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, [and] His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government." Ten years later, the House Judiciary Committee voted against its adoption. The committee noted "the dangers which the union between church and state had imposed upon so many nations of the Old World" and said in light of that it was felt "inexpedient to put anything into the Constitution which might be construed to be a reference to any religious creed or doctrine."

Similar theocratic proposals resurfaced in Congress sporadically over the years. As late as 1950, a proposal was introduced in the Senate that would have added language to the Constitution that "devoutly recognizes the Authority and Law of Jesus Christ, Saviour and Ruler of nations, through whom are bestowed the blessings of liberty." This amendment was never voted out of committee. Efforts to revive it in the early 1960s were unsuccessful.

Today, America's religious demographics are changing, and diversity has greatly expanded since our nation's founding. The number of Jews has increased, and more Muslims are living in America than ever before. Other religions now represented in America include Hinduism, Buddhism and a myriad others. In addition, many Americans say they have no religious faith or identify themselves as atheists, agnostics or Humanists. According to some scholars, over 2,000 distinct religious groups and denominations exist in the United States.

Also, even though most Americans identify as Christian, this does not mean they would back official government recognition of the Christian faith. Christian denominations disagree on points of doctrine, church structure and stands on social issues. Many Christians take a moderate or liberal perspective on church-state relations and oppose efforts to impose religion by government action.

Americans should be proud that we live in a democracy that welcomes persons of many faiths and none. Around the globe, millions of people still dwell under oppressive regimes where religion and government are harshly commingled. (Iran and the former Taliban regime of Afghanistan are just two examples.) Many residents of those countries look to the United States as beacon of hope and a model for what their own nations might someday become.

When the underlying principle has been examined in the crucible of litigation, the Court has unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all.

- Justice John Paul Stevens

Only the principle of church-state separation can protect America's incredible degree of religious freedom. The individual rights and diversity we enjoy cannot be maintained if the government promotes Christianity or if our government takes on the trappings of a "faith-based" state.

The United States, in short, was not founded to be an officially Christian nation or to espouse any official religion. Our government is neutral on religious matters, leaving such decisions to individuals. This democratic and pluralistic system has allowed a broad array of religious groups to grow and flourish and guarantees every individual American the right to determine his or her own spiritual path or to reject religion entirely. As a result of this policy, Americans enjoy more religious freedom than any people in world history. We should be proud of this accomplishment and work to preserve the constitutional principle that made it possible separation of church and state.

If you would like to learn more about this issue, please contact Americans United for Separation of Church and State at our national headquarters in Washington, D.C. We have a wide range of books, fact sheets and other literature about church-state separation. We welcome your comments and your support.

THE ARTIST

Today I’m glad I stored my trusty laptop in the trunk of the Rio. I wasn’t sure I wanted to write today, but my reading, only a few more pages of Vidal’s The GOLDEN AGE to go, wasn’t keeping me concentrated. Too much post nasal drip clogged my throat and my eyes felt sandy, scratchy. But writing called to me so out to the cold trunk to get my Mactop and, so, to writing.

I’ve taken a few classes in drawing in my life, at the senior center and at Spokane Art School. I haven’t started a drawing in well over a year, but every once in awhile, something will catch my eye, like yesterday at Hammer’s coffee shop in downtown Spokane, and I’ll imagine starting a project.

I was eyeing two, chubby (not fat) young women at the coffee counter over the top edge of Vidal’s book when a vision came to me with my lightly stirred libido providing the impetuous. These young women were chubby in a Rubenesque, delightful sort of way. They were there for some time after buying their lattes, sitting at a table chatting as women do, friendly with one another and smiling. One, more than once, glanced toward my ancient visage. Did I remind her of a doting grandfather? Was she so nearsighted she couldn’t tell how old I was?

Though heavy, they still had small waistlines but larger than life breasts. Their flesh was firm and smooth rather than droopy and creased like mine. Their faces were pretty and one had short black hair while the other’s locks were sandy, medium long and curly.

Suddenly, in my vision, they were naked, on their knees and left hands, facing one another with the right hand in a clawed position. They were as two cats hissing at one another, playfully I imagined, two bosom buddies in imaginary cat fight. I realized I would take snapshots of the two posed that way and work from photos. With tripod, I saw myself beginning toward the rear of one the young ladies, a bit to the side though so that the face of the other would be in the picture and working in a half circle to the rear of that other face.

My imagining stirred me up quite a bit. I could see the beginning photo of the series of shots quite clearly. The round buttocks of the one woman with the round cherubic face of the other to the left of those globes of delight. I felt a delightful, friendly humor in the whole thing, the three of us enjoying our project in the intimacy of my imaginary studio.

I have had the experience of sketching a nude while taking a drawing course. My feeling was erotic as I contemplated my subject but not lustful. She was not a beautiful young woman at all, but an older, fleshy, mottled woman of considerable experience in France. The feeling I had was love, respect and awe for her. Drawing my nude, I felt intimately connected to her, as if we were two alone, sharing an experience, even though in the presence of other art students. It was now the same with these two young women—erotic, stimulating with intimations of intercourse unfulfilled.

I repeatedly imagined approaching them to ask them to be a part of my project and reviewed the project in my mind several times, wandering if I took up drawing in a serious way, would I really be able to ask strangers to pose for me?

Then, suddenly, my two posers were facing away from each other, sitting back on their heels with hands on knees and faces jauntily turned up, nose proud of their youthful nudity. They were bookends with a large book squeezed between their fulsome buttocks. What would the book be? The first book I saw would be proportionately large to match the size of its bookends.

Then, suddenly, my imagination quickened, and the book became a small, real size book squashed between huge real life buttocks. The slender volume was almost lost in the flesh. Very funny indeed! At first, it was only a nameless book, confronting the realities of flesh, then a book about sex, then a book about men which these proud women to the core of their bottomly life disdained. The book grew large and shrank again as I looked for interesting images.

Now my women faced each other again in their original pose and between them stood a very skinny woman, an anorexic dying woman with hand on hip. Now my posers weren’t so disdainful. They wanted to be slender like this self-destructive woman. Then the object between my fleshy women became the headless, skinny mannequin which I’d seen that morning while passing through Nordstrom’s. Everything and nothing to be read into that headless part!

Next my two fleshy, nude women became four women, and the object they surrounded became a 70 to 80 year old woman, knowledgeable and aloof in her nude droopiness and lined, dry skin, as if she had a secret these younger women could only guess at, then a coy, middle-aged religious woman protecting her crotch appeared to me. Soon I imagined a whole series of these drawings or paintings in which different objects or persons were surrounded by my youthful, nude, heavy women by twos and fours.

Each imagined image drew from me a different reaction, but mostly it was a lighthearted series, poking fun at so many of our cultural pretensions and hidden reactions to what confronts the women among us. Then the two women left the coffee shop and I returned to Vidal’s homosexual rapier, none the worse for wear, having mounted my imagination and given it a good gallop over fertile fields.
_______________________________________________

“The important thing in acting is to be able to laugh and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. If I have to laugh, I think of my sex life.” —Glenda Jackson

A GOD FOR ALL SEASONS

Here is another most interesting thing about the gods of the Christians—whether we mean father god or his son, Jesus, or the ghost that runs around with lots of power too. For the purpose of this discussion, we'll just mash together all three Christian gods into one god.

Bush says he's doing god's will when he removed Saddam from power. But didn't god put Saddam in power? Maybe god meant Saddam to be in power, maybe god was punishing the Iraqi's for some sin they committed against god and Bush overstepped his bounds in overturning god's plan. Maybe Bush isn't doing god's will at all. How can we know?

But then the Christians can fire back that if god didn't mean for Saddam to be removed from power then Saddam would still be in power. Okay—that's interesting, because that sort of says that whatever happens is god's will. Okay, if everything that happens is god's will, then god's real purposes in human activity can't be discerned in any of history because nothing god does can be picked out in history. His will is everywhere, therefore, it's invisible; it's just whatever is. That means that whatever happens is god's will and that whatever is is god. That makes god pantheistic. It also means that any act by any person is god's will so no person can be blamed for his actions since he's doing god's will which is everything that happens.

If your head is spinning in circles, never mind. So is the holy ghost's.

LET YOUR PSYCHE SOAR!

“Today, as we all know, such thoughts and forms are of a crumbling past and the civilizations dependent on them in disarray and dissolution. Not only are societies no longer attuned to the courses of the planets; sociology and physics, politics and astronomy are no longer understood to be departments of a single science. Nor is the individual interpreted (in the democratic West, at least) as an inseparable subordinate part of the organism of a state. What we know today, if we know anything at all, is that every individual is unique and that the laws of his life will not be those of any other on this earth. We also know that if divinity is to be found anywhere, it will not be ‘out there,’ among or beyond the planets. Galileo showed that the same physical laws that govern the movements of bodies on earth apply aloft, to the celestial spheres; and our astronauts, as we have all now seen, have been transported by those earthly laws to the moon. They will soon be on Mars and beyond. Furthermore, we know that the mathematics of those outermost spaces will already have been computed here on earth by human minds. There are no laws out there that are not right here; no gods out there that are not right here, and not only here, but within us, in our minds. So what happens now to those childhood images of the ascent of Elijah, Assumption of the Virgin, Ascen-sion of Christ—all bodily—into heaven?” (MYTHS TO LIVE BY, p. 251 of Joe Campbell’s 1972, Bantam Book edition)

There are times when I read Joe Campbell’s work which are like reading Carl Sagan or S. J. Gould, when something he says makes me grateful to have shared a fragment of my life span with a fragment of his. His thoughts serve as a springboard to my imagination, and I realize just what humankind is capable of or will be capable of when the dead superstitions of the past finally do really die and the new mythologies set in. The passage above was just such a moment as I sat in Hammer’s coffee shop downtown and read it, and I was so glad to be a human and to able to appreciate what I was reading and so grateful not to have been born in the 17th or any past century!!! Then, again, even in those days, if one was looking to be attuned to the myth of his day, he could soar in those days too, so I take this last sentence back.

Certain local blogs have been full of the screaming rage of religious people who are unable to accept that the face of Terri Schiavo is only a representation of the face of nature in all its brutal reality. Because they are stuck in the old mythologies which they really no longer believe in, they can’t seem to transcend the moment and navigate to the larger vision. I don’t find anything about the Schiavo case to be pleasant, but I am not fixated on it like so many religious persons who do not seem to remember that Terri’s going to a better place according to their mythologies. In fact, that’s how we know that their mythologies no longer work—they’re fighting to keep her alive rather than accepting their supposed reality of death and heaven. No—divinity is not “out there” and they know it in the deepest realms of their psyches. They know there is no heaven and their desperation proves it.
________________________________________________________________________

“[Fox TV News editors] are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff.” —Adlai Stevenson [I do know that Fox News wasn’t around when Adlai was! Allow me a little poetic license here.]