THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT
"Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Ex. 20, 12.
'Honor your father and mother', you bet, or else be killed by your Hebrew dad. "for every child who curses his father or mother shall be killed" and with God's blessing. (Leviticus 20:9) Post that in schools and government buildings- that will make your kids behave.
Someone actually said that to me recently, despite my claim that both morality and ethical behavior stem from a shared cultural and intuitive reality. Simply put- right and wrong exist in the nature of things. Certain actions can preserve or increase the happiness of man, while other actions cause sorrow and misery. Right and wrong are not revelations from some supernatural being, but have been learned through the experience and intelligence of man. There is nothing unworldly about morality; nothing magical about ethics. The effect of our conduct on others, as well as ourselves, is what determines its nature.
Throughout history, human beings have naturally objected to being maimed or killed, and so at all times they tried to protect themselves. It required no revelation from a god to make murder unpopular. The concept of self-preservation is in all of nature.
It is in our nature to know that torture is wrong. We don’t want to be tortured. We intuitively know that rape is wrong. We don’t want to be raped. We know that slavery is wrong. We don’t want to be slaves. Although these are three subjects of which the Bible is embarrassingly silent, except to occasionally advocate in the name of God, we still intuitively know that these things are wrong.
If there is an infinite god, he cannot make that wrong which in the nature of human experience is right. He cannot make ingratitude a virtue any more than he could make a round triangle. The foundation of morality is in the nature of actions and consequences, in the necessary relation between conduct and well-being, and an infinite god cannot increase or diminish the natural consequences of actions.
Even the Catholic Church teaches that human reason inclines people to seek the good and avoid sin, and that people would therefore still be prone to moral behavior even without knowledge of a revealed divine law. This natural law provides the foundation on which humans can build moral rules to guide its choices and regulate society. Other religious groups have adopted similar reasoning.
Morality can be seen in nature, and is not necessarily limited to humans. In a recent experiment, a pair of monkeys was placed in a situation where one monkey would receive a pellet of food when he pulled a chain. However, it would also deliver an electrical shock to the monkey’s companion. The result of the experiment was that the monkey who had access to the chain, starved himself for several days rather then see his companion shocked. This clearly demonstrates compassion and empathy. This clearly demonstrates ethical behavior from an animal quite like us that has no connection to religion.
Some people expect to make this world good by destroying desire, reasoning that if you don’t want anything, you won’t want anything bad. This is a kind of pious petrification that turns all energies towards the direction of repression, and away from growth. Nothing can be more immoral than to waste your own life, and sour that of others with this type of thinking.
In my mind, anything that wipes away a tear from the face of pain is moral. Anything that bursts into blossom, bearing the fruit of joy, is moral. Anything that gives good natured laughter to the world is moral, and is surely the most wonderful music that has ever enriched the ears of man.
In
Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin said Madeline Neumann died Sunday.
"She got sicker and sicker until she was dead," he said.
Vergin said an autopsy determined the girl died from diabetic ketoacidosis, an ailment that left her with too little insulin in her body, and she had probably been ill for about 30 days, suffering symptoms like nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness.
The girl's parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, attributed the death to "apparently they didn't have enough faith," the police chief said.
They believed the key to healing "was it was better to keep praying. Call more people to help pray," he said. The mother believes the girl could still be resurrected, the police chief said.
But wait! That isn't the punchline…. read this...
The girl has three siblings, ranging in age from 13 to 16, the police chief said.
"They are still in the home," he said. "There is no reason to remove them. There is no abuse or signs of abuse that we can see."
Their sister is dead of stupidity and neglect; she died painfully with their dumbass parents hovering over her, chanting to their sky fairy. And this brain dead cop sees no sign of abuse?
Nazis? It’s all about Nazis? Did Stein get his ideas from Raiders of the Lost Ark?
In a parallel universe even crazier than our own, Ben Stein, former Nixon speechwriter turned ironic symbol of the anti-hip, may as well be making a documentary about how the Nazis used the “controversial” theory of gravity to make bombs fall to earth.
His idea is that, because the Nazi's thought it would be a good idea to breed people like animals, the theory of evolution must be wrong.
It’s nuttiness right from the opening moments. Images of Nazi atrocities and the terrors of life behind the Berlin Wall are smugly deployed in an attempt to editorialize away basic scientific fact.
Expelled isn’t about “intelligent design,” about an alternative scientific theory, or even about academic freedom. It’s about Stein believing he has proven that acceptance of evolution leads to atheism (and also, we’re told, to such horrors as birth control). Hence, evolution cannot be allowed to be true.
I know that Ben Stein is not stupid, but like many intelligent people that are raised in a religious environment, he just can't let go of iron-age ideas.
I have lost all respect for Ben Stein.
The Christian religion is based upon vicarious expiation.
It is taught that the very first man committed a crime in the eyes of God for which all of humanity was then held responsible. All men, throughout all time, were then proclaimed guilty of a sin for which they had no personal involvement. God essentially damned the entire human race for the actions of the first single human being.
God, in his wisdom, then devised a scheme to let man atone for the sins of another. This scheme allowed for the suffering of the innocent (in this case the Son of God) - in an extreme fashion, to pay for the perceived sins of the many.
To carry out his plan, God was himself born as a human being called Jesus Christ. God lived out this human life filled with kindness and mercy, and after 33 years, was sacrificed, taking the place of man- bearing his guilt and sin. In that way, God was then satisfied that the death of his own human persona would justify to himself that this sacrifice would allow him to forgive the sins of all who might believe in this action.
God justified the killing of himself in human form (Jesus Christ) as a means of transferring the sins of the sinners (all humans).
It is apparent that in the entire scheme of things, man is simply a bystander. God made the rules: he alone perceived the breaking of those rules as criminal- he alone decided that in order for man to atone for the perceived offenses, he must come to earth as a man and be killed, so that he can forgive mankind.
Aside from its closed-loop absurdity, and from a humanistic standpoint, the transference of guilt is simply not logical, moral, ethical, or humane. In human nature, and in what I like to call the “real world”, is it possible that civilized society would enforce a law that would require an innocent man pay for the crimes of another? Would we knowingly execute an innocent man in place of a criminal? Would we hold generational grudges and punish the sons for the crimes of the fathers? What purpose could that possibly serve? It simply makes no sense- yet, we have a religion based on those very precepts.
Let us pretend that a man who we will call Paul (who happens to be a Christian) killed his wife and children. The police had an airtight case against Paul. Even though Paul was guilty, a police officer (Jack) stepped forward and was willing to go to the electric chair in place of Paul. In that way, the police, the courts, and society as a whole, could forgive Paul because Jack took his place. Jack suffered and died for the sins of Paul. The police should be praised, as well as Jack for transferring the sins of Paul to Jack. In this way, Paul’s sins were forgiven. Does this seem logical to you?
To make innocence suffer is the greatest sin. To find logic and reason in the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible is impossible.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree;
And only God who makes the tree
Also makes the fools like me.
Surrealism began as a 20th century movement of artists and writers who used fantastic images and incongruous juxtapositions in order to represent unconscious thoughts and dreams.
In 1928, a few early surrealists such as Joan Miro and Man Ray, played a parlor game known as “cadaver exquis” (exquisite corpse). This parlor game exploited the mystique of accident to form a collective collage of words or images. The game was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase or draw an image on a piece of paper. Each person was only allowed to see the end of what the previous person wrote, as the paper was folded to only reveal a part of it to the next person. The next person would make his contribution and pass it along to the next player. At the end, the paper was then unfolded to reveal what was created. The game got its name from the initial phrase created, "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau" (The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine). These poetic fragments and images were thought to reveal an unconscious reality in the personality of the group, resulting from a process known as mental contagion. Mental contagion can be said to be a form of involuntary imitation, with the final product being an object of art created by the group consciousness…a surreal compilation.
With that in mind, and in investigating the origins of the Holy Bible, we know that the New Testament is not a single book, but a compilation of many books by various authors. Indeed, many of the books were initially circulated independently or in collections smaller than the New Testament. These books, whose attributed authorship has not been questioned for almost two millennia, have recently been subjected to critical historical research which has shown that all the books in the Bible are no longer held to be written by the people tradition has thought them to be. This discovery is not often communicated to the lay public, and as a result, most Christians and all fundamentalists still strongly believe in the traditional attribution of authorship.
The majority of Christians have only a vague idea about how the collection of these books was achieved. History shows the method was haphazard and was not carried out with the unanimous consent of early Christendom. The canonization process was a hodgepodge of mistaken authorship, faulty logic, and the politics of heresy. From the disputed authors to Marcion and Irenaeus, from Eusebius to Athanasius, from Constantine and the Council of Nicaea to the Council at Carthage, to all the various councils, popes, translators, and decision-makers throughout the years…the road to canonization was a rocky one….with the final authority being this entity called “The Church”.
In researching the authorship and the compilation of the books of the Bible, I am struck with how a form of mental contagion may have played a larger role in what would eventually become the Holy Bible as it exists today. This blend of history, myth, and folklore was pieced together in many forms from oral and written testimony and passed from one generation to another before it was eventually unfolded to reveal this strangely surreal object created by the church consciousness. This compilation, full of failed prophecies, internal contradictions, and scientific errors, could not have been inspired by an all-powerful god…a god who commanded the Israelites to enslave the cities which made peace with them, kill all male inhabitants, and to completely wipe out all the inhabitants of the cities in their inheritance…this god who commanded enslavement, murder, rape, and pillage. It is indeed surreal to think that Christians could reconcile this same god, through Jesus, saying "love your enemies" and yet know that he commanded these atrocities. This compilation is the work of men…only men.
In 325 A.D., three hundred men at Constantine’s insistence made a pivotal decision in the history of Christian theology…by popular vote and under threat from Constantine, they came to the conclusion that God and Jesus were of the same substance. In 333 A.D. Constantine decreed Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and ordered the closing of all Egyptian temples in an attempt to eradicate any and all competing religious systems.
Due to the power of the church, and Constantine in particular, a new testament was created and a Galilean Jew who died three centuries before the fateful Council of Nicaea, was put on the path to deification…thus becoming the world’s first “exquisite corpse”.
