Archive > November 2003
“I don’t think it is possible to pull someone out of religion if they don’t want to go. All we can do is provide information and be an example. [...] We never know fully how our actions affect others. I have read articles that have had tremendous impact on my thinking, but I never wrote to thank the author. Freethinkers who write letters to the local newspaper sometimes feel discouraged when they receive not a single positive response; but this does not mean someone’s life has not been changed. I think all of our actions are like that. What we do produces ripples that radiate out much farther than we may have intended or imagined. In today’s religion-crazed world, speaking out as a freethinker can’t help but have an impact.” Dan Barker from his book Losing Faith In Faith: From Preacher To Atheist.
Enjoy your own atheist Thanksgiving by reading Robert Ingersoll’s Thanksgiving Sermon, and for dessert consider that President Thomas Jefferson refused to give a Thanksgiving proclamation (which was used in the Lee vs. Weisman decision that ruled prayers at graduation ceremonies are unconstitutional).
Alternate pleasant logo here with thanks to Dan “Dan” Howland.
Jane was a puzzle to doctors. She needed a kidney transplant, but her naturally conceived sons could not donate – because they were not biologically related. Tests eventually showed Jane was a chimera – her mother had been pregnant with non-identical twins who had fused together in the womb to make one person. It meant some parts of her are derived from one twin, and the rest from the other… During pregnancy, some cells from the mother slip through into the foetus and vice versa. Up to 90% of women are thought to carry their children’s cells or DNA in their blood during pregnancy – and up to 50% for decades afterwards, a condition called microchimerism. If a woman then has more children, the older sibling’s cells could be passed back into the younger child during that pregnancy.
The ever-stimulating Dr. Menlo brought to my attention one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and counting links to people who get naked as a form of protest. These naked protests were uniformly for ‘left’ type causes: anti-WTO, anti-GMO, animal rights, world peace, etc. It got me wondering… where are the naked protests on the ‘right’ (whatever that might mean)? The only examples I could come up with for naked people on the right were the blurry lines between back-to-nature and blood-and-soil in 1930s Germany, and the Doukhobors [1][2][3][4][5] of today. What does that say about the right (and the left) that one side doffs its duds as a form of protest and the other doesn’t? There’s grant money to be made, I tell you.
Can’t find my original post, but I have wondered here in the past why Amnesty International USA has a hands-off stance on religion. Nearly every issue of their magazine includes a report on abuse by religionists just as horrible as the abuse that government workers or police dish out, but they never call the faithful to be held accountable in the same way. They use John Lennon’s song Imagine in their advertising campaign, but never the verses about religion (“Imagine there’s no heaven, It’s easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky … Imagine there’s no countries, It isn’t hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, No religion too“). If a government includes rape, torture and murder in its constitution then Amnesty International rightly protests, but when a relgion does the same (have you read your holy book lately?) they get all cultural-relativistic and respectful. It’s been a puzzler for me, but this article by the Rev. Dr. William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA and a former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, makes it a bit more clear. It seems to me that he’s waiting for religions to grow up and play nice, the previous few thousand years of consistantly abhorant behavior apparently not being enough time for them to come clean. We just need to be patient, okay?
The healing power of religion is moving through Atlanta, Georgia right now. God’s love is able to bring together groups that formerly were antagonistic to work together in achieving common goals. The Ku Klux Klan (predominately white) and the House of Prayer Church (predominantly Black) have protested together two times now. The first time was a picket march in support of the inherently illegal display of one of the two versions of the Ten Commandments at a courthouse. One House of Prayer representative said: “People in the KKK are human as we are human. If we can come together on a human issue (the Ten Commandments Display) then I feel that we should put those differences aside to stand up for this issue.” The second time was another protest in support of Reverend Arthur Allen. God’s representative Rev. Allen has been convicted of parole violations and charges of aggravated assault and cruelty to children. The charges stemmed from the whipping of two boys in front of the House of Prayer congregation in 2001. Two boys were known to be whipped because they showed up at school with the whelts and scars; nearly forty other children were also said to be whipped. The personal friend of Jesus Christ, Rev. Allen, also has forced marriages in his congregation – including marriages involving 14-year-old-girls – and had an affair with an 18-year-old girl. Said one Klan member: “There was a time when the corrupt Ku Klux Klan was bombing churches, let’s put it that way…there are some (Klan) groups out there that have lost direction. Basically our organization is here to stand up for Christianity and whatever that includes, that’s what we’re going to do.”
God’s love is available to everyone. So whether you are a pedophile, a child abuser, or a nigger hater, there is an organization that will take you in with open arms: Chrisianity.
Yeah, that’s abot the funniest thing this week.
Trevor Blake: If
“IF.” That’s an important word, especially when someone is trying to convince you of something. “IF” this, then that. “IF” plays out in two ways. In science, you can predict something and measure whether it happened or not and then suggest what that might mean. “IF” I drop an object from a cerain height, then it will travel at a certain velocity. The “IF” of science is something you have to pay special attention to, but it works whether you ‘believe in it’ or not. It doesn’t matter what you think about how things should or shouldn’t fall, they fall in a certain way. Maybe you wish you weren’t falilng off your chair, but it happens whether you believe it’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ That’s the “IF” of science. The “IF” of make believe (especially in religion and politics) is different. That “IF” is also important, but when it comes down to it you have to believe in the “IF” before it will work – and it is measured at working because you believed in it. Time and again I read some darn book that seems to have some universal answer in it, and I convince myself for weeks that I’ve found the right “IF.” But it keeps coming back to one particular truism… IF everyone believed in this certain way, then we’d all get along. That statement is inherently true… IF we are all Christians, or Nazis, or capitalists, or communists, or [fill in the blank], then we’d have world peace within our lifetimes. It’s just that “IF” part is so big, and is passed off as being so small, that I end up tricking myself. Darn it! I’ve believed in something again by ignoring that IF EVERYONE part!
Director David Lynch has just initiated a one billion dollar campaign to build one hundred Transcendental Meditation ‘peace palaces’ across the United States. Inside each ‘peace palace’ three hundred or so people will meditate; that will generate magic energies and bring about world peace. How does he know this will work? “If we get enough people to do this, it doesn’t really matter what other people believe. It will work anyway.”
IF.
All that stuff about a yahoo group and pleasantblog@yahoo and blah blah blah – forget I said anything. Tom, you are cleared for liftoff.
If your had a brother named Larry, and Larry liked to mug for the camera, would you post pictures of his face online and invite the whole world to make collages with Larry’s face? http://www.larrysface.com/ did.
Attention pleasanteers: you just got an e-mail from ‘pleasantblog’ at yahoo groups or somethingorother. Please join this group so posts to pleasant can be syndicated via e-mail. I will make sure that you don’t get any additional e-mail from this unless you specifically ask for it. This is a dumb solution to a non-existant problem, but… well, just do what you want to do.
Still figuring it out, but… if you want to get pleasant as e-mail, check out http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pleasantblog/
From a remarkable history of the Pledge of Allegiance by Gene Healy…
What’s so conservative about the Pledge? Very little, as it turns out. From its inception, in 1892, the Pledge has been a slavish ritual of devotion to the state, wholly inappropriate for a free people. It was written by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist pushed out of his post as a Baptist minister for delivering pulpit-pounding sermons on such topics as “Jesus the Socialist.” Bellamy was devoted to the ideas of his more-famous cousin Edward Bellamy, author of the 1888 utopian novel Looking Backward. Looking Backward describes the future United States as a regimented worker’s paradise where everyone has equal incomes, and men are drafted into the country’s “industrial army” at the age of 21, serving in the jobs assigned them by the state. Bellamy’s novel was extremely popular, selling more copies than other any 19th century American novel except Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Bellamy’s book inspired a movement of “Nationalist Clubs,” whose members campaigned for a government takeover of the economy. A few years before he wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, Francis Bellamy became a founding member of Boston’s first Nationalist Club. After leaving the pulpit, Francis Bellamy decided to advance his authoritarian ideas through the public schools. Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance for Youth’s Companion, a popular children’s magazine. With the aid of the National Education Association, Bellamy and the editors of Youth’s Companion got the Pledge adopted as part of the National Public School Celebration on Columbus Day 1892. Bellamy’s recommended ritual for honoring the flag had students all but goosestepping their way through the Pledge: “At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the Flag the military salute–right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it… At the words, ‘to my Flag,’ the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, towards the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side.” After the rise of Nazism, this form of salute was thought to be in poor taste, to say the least, and replaced with today’s hand-on-heart gesture.
From “Crime & Forgiveness” by Danna Harman. published in the Christian Science Monitor… ‘Forgiveness: It’s one of the most emotional of all topics connected with the criminal justice system. Can a man like [kidnapper Arthur] Seale – who, as part of a calculated scheme to enrich himself, killed a man who was also a husband, son, father, and grandfather – ever expect any form of forgiveness? Can he earn it? Should his victims be encouraged to give it? And, does he, or any other criminal, need that forgiveness to fully become a better, changed person?’ Please read the rest of this profound essay on the virtues and limits of forgiveness.
The BBC reports that Duke University has confirmed, in the largest study to date, that prayer has no beneficial (or other) effect on physical health. The BBC also reports that prayer has a beneficial effect on physical health. Religionists merely stick their fingers in their ears and yell I CAN’T HEAR YOU, LA LA LA LA LA…
What a funny world this is! A compilation of quotes I pulled together (with some small amount of commentary) in 1991 keeps making the rounds online. Just found bits of it here and there on someone’s Web page. Unfortunately, my quotes against Christianity are presented by this person as arguments for Islam. If you ask me, all religion is a self-induced mental illness that, whatever it may have offered as far as ethics or explanations of the Universe in the past, does not belong in the 21st Century. But when you release something into the public domain you never know where it will end up.
