For Pete's Sake, Not Another Damn Rapture!

This must be the 57th Rapture I've been through.

Emerson on the Purpose of Life

Among Ralph Waldo Emerson’s primary perceptions about living were these:

• There’s no other world; this one is it.

• All important truths must finally be self-evident.

• The purpose of life is individual development, self-expression and fulfillment.

• Nothing great is ever accomplished without enthusiasm, and your work should be in praise of what you love.

• The days are gods.

“On a day no different than the one now breaking, Shakespeare sat down to begin Hamlet,” explained Emerson’s biographer Robert D. Richardson Jr. “Each of us has all the time there is; each accepts those invitations he can discern. By the same token, each evening brings a reckoning of infinite regret for the paths refused, openings not seen, and actions not taken.”

“There is nothing in this list that Emerson had not learned firsthand. These are not abstractions but practical rules for everyday life. The public consequences of such convictions for Emerson were a politics of social liberalism, abolitionism, women’s suffrage, American Indian rights, opposition to the Mexican War and civil disobedience when government was wrong. The personal consequence of such perceptions was an almost intolerable awareness that every morning began with infinite promise.”

Care for Some Very Stale Pie?

Evangelical Christians will burn the whole Earth to warm their pie in the sky.

Who’s Sitting in the Empty, Invisible Throne?

A theist is like the owner of an empty apartment who insists that, on the contrary, his home is furnished with an invisible, intangible throne more magnificent than any mere physical chair on Earth.  He claims to sit comfortably in that chair by the spiritual fire, with his dogma curled up cozily at his feet. 

But an assertion is not a chair. 

A metaphor is not a chair. 

A belief is not a chair. 

Freethinkers are merely those people who observe that there is nowhere they can sit.

News Flash! He's Not Coming

Sad that these theists continue to wait anxiously for someone who has never and will never arrive, making up little lies about why he’s so very late and how much he loves them, like desperate wallflowers at life’s pageant. For century after century they’ve sat there, erupting occasionally in spasms of bloody madness, then slouching back to wait in the corner, muttering to themselves.

Epicureanism: Anathema to Christianity

“Widespread but mildly disapproved of in antiquity because of its self-sufficient privacy, its acceptance of slaves and women into its communities and its professed concern with happiness and the good life, Epicureanism was anathema to Christianity. It denied a provident God, affirmed the value of life and the values of this world, denied immortality and advocated an account of the universe wholly at variance with the Christian. The account was revived in the 17th century to become the basis of modern science; but the world shaped by science has never seemed able to accept in full the world view and ethic that gave Epicurus’ system a reasonable claim to be complete, consistent and livable.”

— Prof. J.C.A Gaskin, The Oxford Guide Philosophy

When the Virgin Mary Appears in a Pancake...

Let’s give the science-vs-religion problem a shave with Occam's Razor, shall we? 

The world is chock full of claptrap religions making fantastic, contradictory, supernatural claims for which no credible witness ever sees any supporting evidence, unless you want to count the Virgin Mary appearing on pancakes and wall stains. 

What's the simplest answer? Is it more likely that all those fantastic, unseen miracles have happened, and that for example the universe actually does rest on the shell of a cosmic turtle, or that the people who make those claims are delusional and/or lying?

I'm afraid that once you let irrationality in the door — defined in this case as the ardent acceptance on "faith" of metaphysical assertions without visible evidence — you can hardly claim to be surprised about what comes in along with it. One person's "God" tells him to take communion, and the next person's "God" instructs him to kill everyone at an abortion clinic. 

Ethics Begins in Empathy

Ethics begins with empathy, with the felt knowledge that others can be hurt in the same way you can. Dictators and mass murderers and torturers and Republicans aren’t ignorant of being wrong, they simply don’t care. They are power-hungry sociopaths.

The Devil is in the Dumbasses

Many are convinced that their problems are caused by other people’s sexual orientation and the teaching of scientific fact in classrooms. They pay serious attention when talk-radio hosts propose that everybody in schools be armed with guns, and when televangelists inform them that mental illness and hurricanes are caused by “the devil.”

Christian Hysteria Turns Totalitarian

Fundamentalists are always, finally, about totalitarianism. It's the only place they can go to relieve their own nagging doubts about their absurd religious beliefs — deny and forbid the existence of any possible alternatives on any level.

Oh, and you can dry up about your “real Christians.” The fascist, murder-loving, totalitarian Christians are the ones who’ve got the national bullhorn. I’ve heard about all these supposed “real Christians” for a long time, but I don't see any evidence of them in this country. Until they stand up to fight these alleged usurpers, I count them as fiction.

All Those Little Goodies Your God Gives You

Evangelical Christians will burn the whole Earth to warm their pie in the sky.

 

The Worst Is Yet to Come

People will endure or destroy anything on the promise of not having to think and make decisions for themselves.

How Theocracy Strangled Democracy

“Never before has a U.S. political coalition been so dominated by an array of outsider religious dominations caught up in biblical morality, distrust of science and a global imperative of political and religious evangelism. These groups may represent only a quarter to a third of the U.S. population, but they are mobilized…”

“They also have important allies. As we have seen, the financial sector — and a large majority of the richest Americans — understandably finds the alliance convenient. Many of the fundamentalist, evangelical and Pentecostal faithful are too caught up in religion, theology and personal salvation to pay much attention to economics, and they are easily rallied for self-help free enterprise, and disbelief in government. With much of the GOP’s low- and middle-income electorate listening to conservative preachers, the corporate and financial agenda not only prevails but often runs riot.”

— Former Republican adviser Kevin Phillips, writing in his 2006 book American Theocracy.  The Christian-crazy excrement he talks about has hit the proverbial fan since then, not to mention Wall Street’s deregulated meltdown in 2008.

When Christianity Goes Rancid

Evangelical Christians will burn the whole Earth to warm their pie in the sky.

God's Agenda

You go right on being Christians. Don’t let the fact that none of it’s true bother you.

Funny. I'm Not, and I'm Quite Old

Yes, irrational, inhuman tribal brutality can be washed down much more easily with a big dose of divine sanction.

Know Your Bibletution!

Yes, it's called the Bibletution. Republicans just make it up as they go along, and ignore what they said it said yesterday.

Had Enough of the Christian Bullies?

Every time someone has knocked on my door to attempt to shove their religious beliefs down my throat — including last Friday — it's never been an atheist. It's always been a Christian.