"Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men."
Author: Matthew 12 Verses #: 31
This is Jesus speaking. He is discussing the unpardonable sin that will send your soul to hell. Common christian belief is that Jesus died for our sins. John 3:16 states that anyone whosoever believes can be saved, but the above verse clearly exempts blasphemy against the holy spirit. I think this is a pretty easy sin to commit. Blasphemy is an utterance against god. I would have to say that at least 100% of humans do this at some point in their lives. That makes being saved from hell a near impossibility. In moments of intense fear, or intense pain or intense grief one can easily think and then question the goodness of god. It is very easy to question and wonder why something horrible has happened and question "god". This is almost natural for anyone who believes in god to at some point in their life question, doubt or possibly blaspheme god. Very few of us are like Job. This requirement for heaven extends throughout our whole lives and one slip up...bam. No salvation. No hope. I don't know who wrote this book in the bible, but the earliest gospels were written 30 to 40 years after Jesus died. Since the average life span during the time of Jesus was 45, it is likely that those who were living and heard Jesus were likely dead or very old and therefore leave exacts "utterances" as unreliable.
Fear. Raw fear of hell and the fear of the wrath of god has been the greatest tool of the church against it's people for years. The goal of man made religion is total obedience and total control and unrestrained politcal and economic power for centuries. The pope needs you to believe he can pray you out of hell. The church needs you to believe that their organization is the one with an ear to deity. To teach the masses than an utterance made in grief, pain, confusion or dispair will condemn them to an eternity in hell is a very cruel and compassionless teaching. I doubt Jesus ever said it.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Suffer a "witch" not to live
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Whoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death. He that sacrificeth unto any god, save to the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed." (Exodus 22:18-20)
These verses attest to the power of belief as they led to the slaughter of thousands of defenseless people throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Understand that these verses not only authorize the executions but they explicitly command them. Verse 18 justified the burning of women in Europe judged as witches. In early America, the Salem witch trials resulted in the deaths of women and men.
Verse 19 refers to bestiality, a sin considered worthy of death. Christians used verse 20 to justify religious wars, Crusades and the slaughter of unbelievers throughout Europe. And the condemnation of heretics still goes on.
Two themes that Jesus repeatedly discusses are "hell" and his ability and the ability of his followers to cast out "demons" in his name. I have read two news stories in the last 3 days about pastor's in the UK and in Africa subjecting children and teenagers to the stigma of "demon" possession and the subsequent "casting out of the demons" for a fee. Once the child is labeled as demon possessed and/or a "witch" the parents distance themselves from the child or abandon them altogether. It is as if the church is gearing up for the dark ages with "witch hunts" and violence against anyone who believes different than their church does. The bible never illumines what the behavior of demon possession looks like leaving it to the imagination of the "witch HUNTER". This biblical view is so pervasive in america that Pat Robertson could blame the Haiti earthquake on the supposed"devil worship" of Haitian ancestors 300 years ago. Pretty heady knowledge from a billionaire who talks and hears from god daily on his TV show. No one cancelled his show....the TV evangelist just keeps on collecting checks from superstitious and gullible people who send him money. I am sure he claims to have some "ministry" set up in Haiti to help the poor people of Haiti who have suffered so much "because of the sins of their great great grandparents". Yeah ...right!
I do get weary of the delusions of the TV evangelists who claim daily to "heal people" with their prayer cloths, and assorted trinkets sold to the superstitious and the gullible and deluded. We have forgotten that a reformation took place because of Martin Luther's outrage at the catholic church selling "favors".
For a fee you can get a demon cast out and get a prayer for your healing. It is all part of the dog and pony show that is very,very profitable and very, very dangerous for a people who have quit thinking rationally.
These verses attest to the power of belief as they led to the slaughter of thousands of defenseless people throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Understand that these verses not only authorize the executions but they explicitly command them. Verse 18 justified the burning of women in Europe judged as witches. In early America, the Salem witch trials resulted in the deaths of women and men.
Verse 19 refers to bestiality, a sin considered worthy of death. Christians used verse 20 to justify religious wars, Crusades and the slaughter of unbelievers throughout Europe. And the condemnation of heretics still goes on.
Two themes that Jesus repeatedly discusses are "hell" and his ability and the ability of his followers to cast out "demons" in his name. I have read two news stories in the last 3 days about pastor's in the UK and in Africa subjecting children and teenagers to the stigma of "demon" possession and the subsequent "casting out of the demons" for a fee. Once the child is labeled as demon possessed and/or a "witch" the parents distance themselves from the child or abandon them altogether. It is as if the church is gearing up for the dark ages with "witch hunts" and violence against anyone who believes different than their church does. The bible never illumines what the behavior of demon possession looks like leaving it to the imagination of the "witch HUNTER". This biblical view is so pervasive in america that Pat Robertson could blame the Haiti earthquake on the supposed"devil worship" of Haitian ancestors 300 years ago. Pretty heady knowledge from a billionaire who talks and hears from god daily on his TV show. No one cancelled his show....the TV evangelist just keeps on collecting checks from superstitious and gullible people who send him money. I am sure he claims to have some "ministry" set up in Haiti to help the poor people of Haiti who have suffered so much "because of the sins of their great great grandparents". Yeah ...right!
I do get weary of the delusions of the TV evangelists who claim daily to "heal people" with their prayer cloths, and assorted trinkets sold to the superstitious and the gullible and deluded. We have forgotten that a reformation took place because of Martin Luther's outrage at the catholic church selling "favors".
For a fee you can get a demon cast out and get a prayer for your healing. It is all part of the dog and pony show that is very,very profitable and very, very dangerous for a people who have quit thinking rationally.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Modern Day Witchhunts
"These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new languages; "
Author: Mark 16 Verses #: 17
In the african countries of Nigeria and Uganda the pentecost revivalist churches pastors are charging up to several hundred dollars to cast demons out of children. When the exorcism has been thought to have failed children as small as toddlers are being abandoned by their parents and families. This is causing a great strain on the social networks of these countries to find people who will care for these poor abandoned children. The practice of claiming that people and little children are possessed of demons by church leaders creates a stigma upon the child and person that is nothing short of a cruel modern day "witch hunt". At no point in scripture does god explain what a demon possessed person looks like or acts like and it is impossible to provide proof of demon possession. This has left the accusation of demon possession open to those church leaders and church members with the largest and most vivid imaginations. I have met many a "preacher" in my 30 years of church attendance who claimed they cast out demons and yet the characteristics and signs and symptoms of a person requiring exorcism is quite vague and the actual proof that a "demon" has been cast out is non existent. To be singled out for a public exorcism is quite demeaning and very confusing for an adult let alone a little child and yet is done routinely in many american churches. Until you have had someone lay hands on you and start screaming for the devil to come out of your body/mind/spirit you cannot really appreciate the confusion and damage that this practice can do. I personally pity any child forced into the experience.
2,000 years ago very little was understood about mental illness, head trauma, and various neurological disorders which I suppose could have been construed as demon possession. Since the advent of modern psychiatry and psychiatric medication society has been able to close institutions/jails that were designed to keep the mentally and criminally insane from the population at large. We no doubt still have a problem with people who need treatment for mental illness and are not getting the care and drugs that they need. Many mentally ill people still refuse help and fail to recognize their illness. This no doubt causes a great deal of suffering as any family unit can attest to when subjected to a mentally ill and unmedicated family member. I personally have never known an exorcism of demons as sufficient to accomplish anything except embarrass and ridicule the person being subjected to the experience. When you are forced to live with someone who has a manic explosive anger disorder for instance one can only wish an "exorcism" could ease the pain and end the physical abuse, but the reality is that demons are a figment of the imagination as is exorcism. Modern day exorcisms are nothing but a fraud and a dog and pony show put on by a church leader who wants to make themselves look powerful and connected to deity before they pass the offering plate.
Author: Mark 16 Verses #: 17
In the african countries of Nigeria and Uganda the pentecost revivalist churches pastors are charging up to several hundred dollars to cast demons out of children. When the exorcism has been thought to have failed children as small as toddlers are being abandoned by their parents and families. This is causing a great strain on the social networks of these countries to find people who will care for these poor abandoned children. The practice of claiming that people and little children are possessed of demons by church leaders creates a stigma upon the child and person that is nothing short of a cruel modern day "witch hunt". At no point in scripture does god explain what a demon possessed person looks like or acts like and it is impossible to provide proof of demon possession. This has left the accusation of demon possession open to those church leaders and church members with the largest and most vivid imaginations. I have met many a "preacher" in my 30 years of church attendance who claimed they cast out demons and yet the characteristics and signs and symptoms of a person requiring exorcism is quite vague and the actual proof that a "demon" has been cast out is non existent. To be singled out for a public exorcism is quite demeaning and very confusing for an adult let alone a little child and yet is done routinely in many american churches. Until you have had someone lay hands on you and start screaming for the devil to come out of your body/mind/spirit you cannot really appreciate the confusion and damage that this practice can do. I personally pity any child forced into the experience.
2,000 years ago very little was understood about mental illness, head trauma, and various neurological disorders which I suppose could have been construed as demon possession. Since the advent of modern psychiatry and psychiatric medication society has been able to close institutions/jails that were designed to keep the mentally and criminally insane from the population at large. We no doubt still have a problem with people who need treatment for mental illness and are not getting the care and drugs that they need. Many mentally ill people still refuse help and fail to recognize their illness. This no doubt causes a great deal of suffering as any family unit can attest to when subjected to a mentally ill and unmedicated family member. I personally have never known an exorcism of demons as sufficient to accomplish anything except embarrass and ridicule the person being subjected to the experience. When you are forced to live with someone who has a manic explosive anger disorder for instance one can only wish an "exorcism" could ease the pain and end the physical abuse, but the reality is that demons are a figment of the imagination as is exorcism. Modern day exorcisms are nothing but a fraud and a dog and pony show put on by a church leader who wants to make themselves look powerful and connected to deity before they pass the offering plate.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
A brigade called the Grim Reapers
"Who knows whether God will not turn and relent, and turn away from his fierce anger, so that we might not perish?""
Author: Jonah 3 Verses #: 9
The story of Jonah is a story of a prophet who did not want to do what God wanted him to so God caused a big fish to swallow him. As the story goes, Jonah cried out to God for 3 days and 3 nights from sheol (the place of the dead) and God brought him back from death and caused the fish to vomit him on dry land. He then goes to Nineveh and tells the people to repent of their violence and evil or they will be destroyed. The entire population repents and God does not destroy them. Jonah is disappointed that God did not destroy them and goes into deep depression and asks God to kill him.
The book of Jonah is a very exciting and interesting tale of how God worked through a prophet named Jonah and relented of destroying a city of 120,000 people when they began to worship him, the Hebrew God . Jonah believed that God would bring destruction on the city of Ninevah if they did not repent and worship Yahweh.
Many modern americans believe hurricanes, and 9/11 are acts of God meant to punish America for it's evil, but our violence to other countries like Iraq are not interpreted as a violence God abhores. Men like John Hagee and Pat Robertson are blaming any american tragedy on God's anger and judgement. All this implies God punishes some people including children out of anger because america is not "christian enough". This strikes me as very arrogant and superstitious. I suppose the same mindset dimishes bombing raids in Iraq and Afghanistan because those people are evil and deserve the judgement of God. Somewhere in the psyche of America the God of Jonah justifies our "holy" wars against a people who believe and look differently than we do. 18 and 19 year old boys become our "grim reapers" and fight "evil" (GWBush favorite phrase) in brigades in the streets of Bagdad by that name. What a culture believes about God does matter and the muslim world will suffer because we have the bombs and afterall God is on our side!
Author: Jonah 3 Verses #: 9
The story of Jonah is a story of a prophet who did not want to do what God wanted him to so God caused a big fish to swallow him. As the story goes, Jonah cried out to God for 3 days and 3 nights from sheol (the place of the dead) and God brought him back from death and caused the fish to vomit him on dry land. He then goes to Nineveh and tells the people to repent of their violence and evil or they will be destroyed. The entire population repents and God does not destroy them. Jonah is disappointed that God did not destroy them and goes into deep depression and asks God to kill him.
The book of Jonah is a very exciting and interesting tale of how God worked through a prophet named Jonah and relented of destroying a city of 120,000 people when they began to worship him, the Hebrew God . Jonah believed that God would bring destruction on the city of Ninevah if they did not repent and worship Yahweh.
Many modern americans believe hurricanes, and 9/11 are acts of God meant to punish America for it's evil, but our violence to other countries like Iraq are not interpreted as a violence God abhores. Men like John Hagee and Pat Robertson are blaming any american tragedy on God's anger and judgement. All this implies God punishes some people including children out of anger because america is not "christian enough". This strikes me as very arrogant and superstitious. I suppose the same mindset dimishes bombing raids in Iraq and Afghanistan because those people are evil and deserve the judgement of God. Somewhere in the psyche of America the God of Jonah justifies our "holy" wars against a people who believe and look differently than we do. 18 and 19 year old boys become our "grim reapers" and fight "evil" (GWBush favorite phrase) in brigades in the streets of Bagdad by that name. What a culture believes about God does matter and the muslim world will suffer because we have the bombs and afterall God is on our side!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Book Review
Suppose you had never heard of Christianity, and that next Sunday morning a stranger standing in a pulpit told you about a book whose authors could not be authenticated and whose contents, written hundreds of years ago, included blood-curling legends of slaughter and intrigue and fables about unnatural happenings such as virgin births, devils that inhabit human bodies and talk, people rising from the dead and ascending live into the clouds, and suns that stand still. Suppose he then asked you to believe that an uneducated man described in that book was a god who could get you into an eternal fantasy-place called Heaven, when you die. Would you, as an intelligent rational person, even bother to read such nonsense, let alone pattern your entire life upon it. --- from book's first page
The above is a book review of the book "The Born Again Skeptics View of the Bible" by Ruth Hurmence Green.
The above is a book review of the book "The Born Again Skeptics View of the Bible" by Ruth Hurmence Green.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
God wants Glenn Beck's eyes!!
"I truly came to a place that is the greatest blessing," he said, according to Yahoo! News. "Lord, if you need my eyes, they're yours. They were yours the whole time anyway. Thank you for letting me see as long as I have. That's a blessing." Glenn Beck
Why would an omnipotent, omnipresent, all knowing God "need" to make someone blind. This just shows the craziness of the craziness of ascribing thoughts, actions and intentions to an invisible and silent deity. Glenn Beck is going blind due to a hereditary defect. This is the common view from the 4,000 year old book of Job that everything good comes from god and everything bad comes from god and evertthing both good and bad has a divine purpose.
In John 9: 1-41 In this story Jesus and the disciples pass by a blind man. The disciples asked who sinned??? Him or his parents?? Jesus said he was blind in order that the "works of god would be made manifest in him". In other words God had made the man blind so that Jesus could heal him and prove that he was the son of god. So in otherwords...God had made him blind so that God could prove he was God and heal him.
Fastforward 2,000 years and filter a hereditary disease through this biblical lens and you have a common prevailing religious view that god is to blame. Ancient man did not know all the causes of blindness, modern man does, and yet god is invoked when there is no proof he is even involved. DNA and genetics are involved in Glenn Beck's blindness. Why spiritualize it beyond that? Modern man needs to progress beyond the book of Job and look for a "scientific" and "medical" solution. God quit healing people of blindness 2,000 years ago, but modern medicine has only just begun.
Why would an omnipotent, omnipresent, all knowing God "need" to make someone blind. This just shows the craziness of the craziness of ascribing thoughts, actions and intentions to an invisible and silent deity. Glenn Beck is going blind due to a hereditary defect. This is the common view from the 4,000 year old book of Job that everything good comes from god and everything bad comes from god and evertthing both good and bad has a divine purpose.
In John 9: 1-41 In this story Jesus and the disciples pass by a blind man. The disciples asked who sinned??? Him or his parents?? Jesus said he was blind in order that the "works of god would be made manifest in him". In other words God had made the man blind so that Jesus could heal him and prove that he was the son of god. So in otherwords...God had made him blind so that God could prove he was God and heal him.
Fastforward 2,000 years and filter a hereditary disease through this biblical lens and you have a common prevailing religious view that god is to blame. Ancient man did not know all the causes of blindness, modern man does, and yet god is invoked when there is no proof he is even involved. DNA and genetics are involved in Glenn Beck's blindness. Why spiritualize it beyond that? Modern man needs to progress beyond the book of Job and look for a "scientific" and "medical" solution. God quit healing people of blindness 2,000 years ago, but modern medicine has only just begun.
God's banning of bastards from worship for 10 generations
A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD." (Deuteronomy 23:1-2)
If someone has the misfortune of being born as a result of his mother being raped he is excluded by this edict from worship for 10 generations. This is punishing the child for something that happened between the 2 adults that parented him. It is most probably very likely his mother did not intend to have a child out of wedlock. This bible verse demonizes children out of wedlock. A bastard child does not have the same access to god as a child whose father claims him. I remember that the word bastard carried very heavy shame up to my generation. The shame of birthing and raising a "bastard" has no doubt been the cause of women for centuries risking their own life to resort to self-induced abortions to remove a pregnancy that would result in a stigmatized "bastard" child. Thankfully, the stigma has been lifted in our present culture to the point where now up to 45% of mothers birth babies out of wedlock. To take the bible literally those children would not be allowed to enter a church or a synagogue for 10 generations.
If someone has the misfortune of being born as a result of his mother being raped he is excluded by this edict from worship for 10 generations. This is punishing the child for something that happened between the 2 adults that parented him. It is most probably very likely his mother did not intend to have a child out of wedlock. This bible verse demonizes children out of wedlock. A bastard child does not have the same access to god as a child whose father claims him. I remember that the word bastard carried very heavy shame up to my generation. The shame of birthing and raising a "bastard" has no doubt been the cause of women for centuries risking their own life to resort to self-induced abortions to remove a pregnancy that would result in a stigmatized "bastard" child. Thankfully, the stigma has been lifted in our present culture to the point where now up to 45% of mothers birth babies out of wedlock. To take the bible literally those children would not be allowed to enter a church or a synagogue for 10 generations.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)