Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Phillip Larkin Poem - Church Going

Church Going 

Once i am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting seats and stone 
and little books; sprawlings of flowers cut
For Sunday brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense musty unignorable silence 
Brewed God knows how long. Hat-less I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence 

Move forward run my hand around the font.
From where i stand the roof looks almost new--
Cleaned or restored? someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern I peruse a few
hectoring large-scale verses and pronounce
Here endeth much more loudly than I'd meant
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book donate an Irish sixpence 
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do 
And always end much at a loss like this 
Wondering what to look for; wondering too
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show 
Their parchment plate and pyx in locked cases 
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or after dark will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games in riddles seemingly at random;
But superstition like belief must die 
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass weedy pavement brambles buttress sky.

A shape less recognizable each week 
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last the very last to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber randy for antique 
Or Christmas-addict counting on a whiff
Of grown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative 

Bored uninformed knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation--marriage and birth 
And death and thoughts of these--for which was built
This special shell? For though I've no idea
What this accoutered frosty barn is worth 
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is 
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet 
Are recognized and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete 
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious 
And gravitating with it to this ground 
Which he once heard was proper to grow wise in 
If only that so many dead lie round.

1955

The Holocene Extinction



We have entered into an unprecedented time in history when our species has done so well that we have become the virus eating and rotting our green planet. Geologists are now debating to call this era the Anthropocene. Since 1970 we have doubled in population and we have already decimated most of the habitable areas of the planet  along with water and food sources. We are regretfully entering into the 6th major extinction event on the planet called the Holocene Extinction. This time, no asteroid will have caused it, we will have. Ironically, Humanism has done so well in advancing the health and wealth of all people on the planet that we have quickly used up all our resources. Our success as humans is killing us.

Here is some background facts and information to support this grim conclusion: 


POPULATION EXPLOSION
Fritz Haber - responsible for half the population explosion today. Noble prize 1918
Food choices (meatbased) has declared war on the world. See Cowspiracy movie
Frank Fenner, (scientist credited for eliminating smallpox) predicts humans extinct in 50 years
In 1980, he announced to the World Health Assembly that the disease had been eradicated, an accomplishment hailed as the greatest achievement of the World Health Organisation.
We require 1.5 earths to feed 7 billion according to Global Footprint Network
We will need 2 earths to sustain everyone by 2030.

END OF MAN
Nasa predicts a collapse of the species.
Anthropocene
Holocene Extinction
Fresh water is running out!
52 % of wildlife is gone since 1970
50% of rain forest has been cut down!
90% of all large fish since since 1950 are gone
Climate is heating up
30% increase in CO2 in ocean since 1960
10% increase in global methane and coming from Arctic- Permian Extinction
We are in 6th of Earths extinction events
What happened on Easter Island is now occuring globally


LOSS OF RESOURCES
Farming has changed 50% of all the earths arable lands for human food.
The UN now insists this is a major threat to environment.
80% of all our drinking water goes to livestock.
It takes 1300 Gallons of water to make a burger according to USDA.

80% of rainforest is gone and 90% of rainforestof entire West Coast of Africa is gone forever.
Livestock production produces more carbon emissions then cars.
In 2007 California lost 190,000 acres to wildfire. Yearly 18 million acres of rain forest are lost.
San Joaquin Valley lost equivalent of 2 Lake Meads in only 4 years!
Ogallala Aquifer drying up in 50 years.

EATING MEAT IS PRIMARY CAUSE OF RESOURCE DEPLETION
Report from the Worldwatch Institute says that “…the human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future…”
5% of water consumed in the US is by private homes. 55% of water consumed in the US is for animal agriculture. This and other great statisics with sources.

-The Book by Dr. Richard Oppenlander " Comfortably Unaware Insights:

Water loss in California and export of water for livestock.
A quarterpounder requires 55 square feet of rainforest
100 million actres in California, Nevada and Arizona. 82 M used for livestock. 500,000 acres urban zones. rest is State and Federal that continues to open areas for livestock.
50 million pigs in Iowa and Missouri using 60 times the water per pig then a human uses daily. These are accelerating the depletion of the Aquifer and the return of the Dust Bowl.


28 billion fish are taken in ocean annually.
Up to 5 times more biomass is killed in process
There are 60 billion livestock animals alive today.
30 to 50 million sharks each year are killed as bykill.
35,000 miles of rivers and groundwater in 17 states has been permanently contaminated by farm waste.
42% of irrigation water in California is used for livestock. Use of aquifer in San Joaquin is pumped out at half a trillion gallons more then recharge rate. This is California largest source of drinking water formed from the last ice age melt. The ground has sunk 29 feet.
The Ogalala will be dry by 2020 and 8 states depend on its water. It is drawn down 3 to 10 feet/year.

When fires occur in California, it is broadcast on the news. During October 2007, for example, when approximately 190,000 acres in California were lost, there was seemingly non-stop news coverage. That same year, over 30 million acres were lost in the rainforests, with no news coverage whatsoever. Is one circumstance really less devastating than the other? In fact, over 30 million acres of rainforests per year have been lost every year since the 1970s. Although some of this rainforest land is logged, most is slashed and burned, then used to either raise cattle or to raise crops to feed to cattle. As much as 80 percent of all global rainforest loss is turned into grazing for cattle or crops for livestock, and the process is extremely land-intensive. It requires fifty-five square feet of rainforest to produce just one quarter-pound burger.










Monday, March 28, 2016

What is Philosophy?




"No philosophy is true that is not based on science." - Albert Einstein

The term philosophy often gets tossed about without understanding what it actually means. Obtruse and dead weight ideologies confuse the original purpose of philosophy. We have made philosophy a dry and uninteresting discussion filled with a new language that uproots our curiosity and plummets us to a state of banal apathy. 

But, in the beginning philosophy was simply science. The very basics of Philosophy is about understanding reality and explaining how to be as happy as possible. It should not be a deadpan and stale discussion. It is the conversation everybody wants to be part of. It's the conversation of our lives and how to improve them. But happiness is elusive for most because life is at it's core hard. We are born, we suffer and then we die. What's the point of it all anyway?

WHAT IS REAL AND HOW CAN WE KNOW IT? 

They very first question proposed by the ancient thinkers was: "What is real?"  This question is posed in the first branch of Philosophy and the very first step for anyone interested in philosophy must ask. There are those who believe in an unseen world that can be believed by faith. But, a new way of thinking called Empiricism was being used by ancient Greek philosophers. Empiricism owns up to the fact that we are easily misled by imaginings and proposes to put to the test our ideas before they assume credibility. Empiricism is at the very foundation of our modern world today.

It was in ancient Greece that was the cradle for both modern day ideas of the universe and philosophy.  The ancient Greeks probed mysteries by discovering the tools of rational inquiry. The universe was not just a Maya or dream. It was real and it could be studied! The ancient Greek philosophers were the first scientists. Democritus in 400 BC proposed that nature was comprised of atoms and even Aristotle was a biologist.

Empiricism and Logic answered the first question asked by Philosophy.  It seemed such a basic question and is still so important today with so many religions that are basing their way of thinking on another system.

According to modern psychologists, a person who believes in a thing with no evidence is suffering from a delusion. The first step in philosophy is to correct the mind in it's propensity to heed authority and follow the leader. We must ask questions. But, the aspiring philosopher inevitably must ask the next major question proposed by Philosophy: How to achieve happiness?

WHAT IS HAPPINESS? 

To Epicurus, happiness was the most essential goal in life. Since we were children, our goal was to be happy. The very purpose and testing grounds of any natural philosophy is to determine it's effectiveness. That is, does it reduce suffering and increase pleasure? Happiness can come from actively being involved in an activity or simply in contemplation. Finding ones bliss requires a fearless mind and a pain free body. That is why, like a doctor offering you medicine, a philosophy is useful if it achieves giving you happiness.

Science seems to leave us in a cold and meaningless world. A scientist cannot admit to evidence for Karma. No ethereal other world is waiting beyond the grave that we can be certain of. We were born into a world of suffering and then die. What is it all for?

Happiness is systemically a result of the suppression of it's evil twin - suffering. To Buddhism, life was like a dream and produced illusions that meditation could detach you from. Death is also portrayed as some kind of illusion. On the contrary, the Greek thinkers like Epicurus dismissed ideas that have not passed the tests of sound argument as well as empirical evidence. The real way to get rid of suffering is to eliminate false beliefs as a source of mental conflict.

Happiness – by Hermann Hesse


Happiness – by Hermann Hesse

Translation from the German by Gerry Busch

To me, happiness means something quite specific, namely completeness itself, timeless existence, the eternal music of the world, that which others may have called the harmony of the spheres or the smile of God. This phenomenon, this endless music, this richly resounding, golden, glittering eternity is the pure, absolute present, it knows no time, no history, no before, no after. The face of the world beams and laughs endlessly, while people, generations, races, empires rise up and blossom, only to fall back into the shadows of oblivion once more.

Endlessly life plays its music, endlessly it performs its round dance, and anything we mortal, endangered, frail beings derive in the way of joy, solace and laughter is the glow from that, an eye full of light, an ear full of music.

Regardless of whether or not the “happy” people in legends ever existed, or whether the great light shone on those children of fortune and chosen people merely during festive occasions, or only for moments at a time, they could not have experienced any other happiness, shared in any other joy but this.

Breathing in the absolute present, singing along with the chorus of the spheres, dancing along in the world’s round dance, laughing along with the eternal laughter of God, this is our share of happiness. Many have experienced it only once, many only occasionally. But the people who experienced it were not merely happy for a moment, they also brought along with them some of the glitter and sound, some of the light of timeless joy — the source of everything that shines as brightly centuries later as on the day it was created, such as love brought into the world by lovers, solace and serenity given us by artists.

It has taken me a lifetime to arrive at this sweeping, universal, sacred meaning for the word happiness, and perhaps it is necessary to emphasize to the school children among my readers that I am in no way engaging in semantics here; instead, I am describing my own inner development, and am not trying to persuade them to adopt a meaning this strong in their oral or written usage of the word happiness. For me, however, that beloved, glowing little word happiness has become associated with everything I have felt since childhood upon hearing the sound of the word itself. The sensation was certainly more pronounced in childhood, the response of all the senses to the sensual qualities and appeal of the word were louder and more intense, but if the word itself had not been so deep, primal and all-encompassing, my ideas about the eternal present, about the “golden trail” (in Goldmund), and about the laughter of immortals (in Steppenwolf) would not have crystallized around this word.

As elderly people try to recall when, how often and how profoundly they have felt happiness, they search primarily in their childhood, and rightly so, because the experience of happiness requires, above all, an independence from time, and from fear and from hope, as well; but most people lose this capacity with age. When trying to remember my share in the glow of the eternal present, in the smile of God, I return to my childhood, too, for that is where the most significant discoveries turn up.

Of course, the happy times of youth were more dazzling and variegated, more festively dressed and more colorfully illuminated; the intellect played a bigger role during those times than in childhood. But on closer and closer inspection, they turn out to have been more fun and merriment than true happiness. People were cheerful, witty, clever, and amused one another. I remember one moment among my circle of friends when I was in the full bloom of my youth: During a conversation, someone innocently asked for the definition of Homeric laughter, and I answered him using rhythmical laughter that was an exact imitation of hexameter. This brought hilarity and the clinking of wineglasses — but moments like this did not survive further scrutiny. That was all very nice, it was funny, tasted good, but happiness it was not.

Happiness, it seemed, when one pursued this study long enough, happiness had only been experienced in childhood, in hours or moments that were very hard to recapture, for even then, even in the realm of childhood, the glitter did not always turn out to be genuine, the gold was not always pure. If I was painstakingly selective very few experiences remained, and even they were not pictures one could paint or stories one could tell; they adroitly defied description. When such a memory first presented itself, it was a recollection of weeks or days, or at least one day, maybe Christmas, a birthday or the first day of a vacation. But to reproduce just one childhood day in memory would require thousands of images, and one’s memory cannot bring together a sufficient number of pictures for even one single day, let alone half a day.

Nevertheless, whether in occurrences lasting days, hours or mere minutes at a time, I have experienced happiness often, and have had brief encounters with it in my later years, even in old age. As often as I have summoned up, queried and tested those early encounters with happiness, however, one in particular has survived. It was when I was a schoolboy, and the actual feeling, that which was genuine, fundamental and magical about it, the condition of inner laughter and being one with the world, absolutely free of time, hope and fear, and living totally in the present, cannot have lasted long, perhaps just minutes.
A lively boy of about ten years, I awoke one morning with an unusually sweet and profound feeling of joy and well-being which shone through me like an inner sun. It was as if something new and wonderful had occurred right at this moment of awakening from a good sleep; as if my miniature, boyish universe had entered a new state of being, a new light and climate; as if early this very morning, all of life had finally attained its full value and meaning. I knew nothing of yesterday or of tomorrow, I was immersed in a wondrous today and I gently bathed in it. It felt good and was savored by my mind and my senses without curiosity and without explanation; it permeated me, and tasted magnificent.
It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.

There was nothing more to be seen of the world from my bed, only this beautiful sky and this long strip of roof on the neighbor’s house; but even this roof, this boring and dismal roof made of dark reddish-brown tiles, seemed to be laughing. Over its steep, shadowy, oblique surface ran a gentle play of colors, and the one bluish glass tile between the reddish clay ones seemed alive, and seemed to take a particular pleasure in reflecting a bit of this quiet, steadily shining morning sky. The sky, the somewhat rough edge of the roof, the uniformed army of the brown tiles, and the thin, airy blue of the glass tile seemed in a beautifully pleasant way to be in agreement with one another; they appeared to have no other intention on this special morning but to laugh at one another good-naturedly. The blue of the sky, the brown of the tiles and the blue of the glass had a purpose; they belonged together, they played with one another, they were in good spirits; and it felt good to see them that way, to be a spectator of their games, to feel permeated by the same morning glow and the same sense of well-being that they were enjoying.

And so I lay in bed for a delightful eternity, enjoying the onset of morning and the peaceful after-effects of sleep, and if I have savored the identical or similar happiness at other times in my life or not, none of those moments could have been any deeper or more genuine: The world was in order. And whether this happiness lasted a hundred seconds or ten minutes, it was so far removed from time that it resembled every other genuine happiness as completely as one fluttering blue lycaenid butterfly resembles another. It was transitory, it got engulfed by time, but it was profound and ageless enough to draw me back to it today after more than sixty years, so that in spite of my tired eyes and aching fingers, I am compelled to recall it, smile at it, recreate and describe it. This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification.

It was still quiet in the house, and not a sound was heard from outside, either. Were it not for this silence my reverie would probably have been disrupted by reminders of daily duties, of getting up and going to school. But it was obviously neither day nor night. True, the pleasant light and the cheery blueness of the sky were there, but one could hear neither the maidservants’ footsteps on the sandstone tiles of the court, nor a slamming door, nor the boy from the bakery on the steps. This morning interlude was beyond time, it demanded nothing, it hinted at no events to come, it was self-sufficient, and since I was an integral part of it there was no actual day for me either, not one thought about getting up and going to school, about half-completed homework assignments or poorly studied vocabulary, about rushing through breakfast in the freshly aired-out dining room across the way.

My happiness met its downfall this time through an intensification of beauty, through an increase and overabundance of joy. As I lay there motionless, letting the bright, peaceful morning world penetrate me and draw me into itself, something unusual in the distance forced its way through the quiet; it was something glittering, overly-brilliant, golden and triumphant, bursting with joy, full of fascinating, stimulating sweetness: the sound of a trumpet.

And as I finally woke up completely, sat up in bed and threw the covers back, the sound had already acquired two voices, many voices: It was the town band marching along the streets, making them reverberate with their playing; an extremely rare and exciting occurrence, blaring out with merriment, making my childish heart both laugh and sob at the same time. It was as if all of the happiness, all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring, bittersweet tones and flowed away, becoming temporal and transitory once more.

I was out of my bed in one second, trembling with excitement, and I dashed to the door and into the adjoining room where I could watch the streets below from the windows. Giddy from excitement, curiosity and the desire to participate, I lay down in an open window, listened with pleasure to the swelling, majestic sounds of the approaching band, saw and heard the neighbors’ houses and the streets awaken, come to life, and fill up with faces, figures and voices — and at that very same moment I recalled everything that had been completely forgotten during my euphoria between sleep and daylight. As it turned out, there was no school today — no, it was an official holiday, the King’s birthday, I believe, and so there were parades, banners, music and incredible entertainment in store for us.

And with this realization I had returned and was subject once again to the laws which govern everyday life; for even if those metallic sounds had awakened me to a holiday rather than an average day, the special, beautiful and sacred aspects of this morning’s magic had already passed, engulfed by the waves of time, world and routine once more.

… Hermann Hesse, 1955


William Edelen on Wonder


If we are fortunate, we can rediscover wonder. We who have become so preoccupied with gaining and spending, with winning and losing, we have lost sight of the fact that we live surrounded by miracles. Wonder is the capacity of sustained joy and awe. Wonder is a sense of freshness and spontaneity.

Every day is a surprise party. Life is a cafeteria of delights, a new flower ... a hummingbird hovering ... a cucumber cucumbering. To sense the ultimate in the common, and in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal, is to live with wonder.

The torpid, mindless mass






WILLIAM EDELEN / COMMENTARY
10/7/01
The torpid, mindless mass
The question for today is at the heart of the problem we face as a
nation. It is exactly the same question that was requested for my
lectures at the University of Alabama Conference Center several
years ago. I was asked to explore Carl Jung's question: "Why are so
many millions willing and eager to turn their lives over to outside
authorities?"

Why are so many today, without thinking, willing to turn their
mind/brain, soul/spirit, over to outside individuals, institutions,
authorities and ideologies? Whether it be to Osama bin Laden or
whether it be to Christian, Muslim and Jewish authorities of dogma,
or whether it be to Republican or Democratic dogma, or whatever the
outside authority or institution might be that is telling you what
to think, what to believe and how to live your life.
Carl Jung put it this way in his essays: "It is a delusion when the
Christian churches try to rope the individual into some social
organization and reduce him or her to a condition of diminished
responsibility, instead of raising him or her out of the torpid,
mindless mass and making it clear that he, or she, is the one
important factor. Resistance to the organized mass can be effected
only by the man, or woman, who is as well organized in his/her
individuality as the mass itself."
"Once more we see people cutting each other's throats in support of
childish theories of how to create paradise on earth."
I devoted my lecture at the University of Alabama to four steps:
1. Begin by taking a hard, critical look at all so-called religious
authorities.
2. Learn to trust your very own personal experiences and intuition.
Thomas Jefferson said it well to his young nephew: "Your own reason
is the only oracle given to you by God."
Jefferson always used "God" as a Deist, not as a biblical Christian.
3. Accept the risks that go with taking control of your own life and
its direction.
4. Enjoy the joys and freedom that are a part of such a new
orientation.
The more we depend on outside authorities for direction, the more is
our own growth and creative unfoldment arrested.
And yet, how many still yearn for an outside religious authority to
pat us on the head and tell us we have been good, or to slap our
little hands and tell us we have been bad, ensuring that we stay
forever emotionally stunted and dwarfed spiritually.
One of Buckminster Fuller's most brilliant observations says it all:
"All organized religions of the past were developed as beliefs in
secondhand information. It will be an entirely new era when man
finds himself confronted with direct experience."
There is a humorous fad, or movement, today among some elements of
Christianity. It serves as a perfect example. It is called WWJD?
They have it on T-shirts. It is to approach every issue and every
question by asking "What Would Jesus Do?" I ask, Jesus is an outside
authority on what?
Jesus is certainly not my authority on any question regarding
science. Any seventh-grade child today knows more about the world
than did Jesus. Jesus knew nothing about DNA molecules, Vitamin E or
splitting atoms. Jesus would certainly not be an authority on music,
anthropology, archaeology, history, medicine, law, horticulture,
agronomy or philosophy.
When Normin Cousins was writing his wonderful biography of Albert
Schweitzer, he asked Schweitzer this question, "Do you think anyone
has ever lived who was as good a person as Jesus?" And Schweitzer
replied, "millions."
Our obsession with outside authority, whether in individuals or
institutions, ensures that we remain as emotionally and spiritually
dwarfed as children.
I had a friend who was a devoted Episcopalian. She never missed a
church service. I asked her one day: "Mary, you recite the Nicene
Creed every Sunday, well, I graduated from one of the best
theological schools in America and I do not have a clue what the
Nicene creed is all about or what all that gobble-de gook means --
'very god of very god, very man of very man ....' and all of that
psycho babble -- so please explain it to me."
Mary then said this to me, "I don't know what it all means. I just
recite it because my minister told me I should and that it was good
for me."
I said to her: "Mary, you recite it back like a parrot -- just words
that have no meaning to you -- because your minister told you it was
important for you to do it."
She said, "yes"
Human beings, in the mass, sink unconsciously to an inferior moral
and intellectual level.
Human beings, in the mass, like sheep, obeying and following outside
authority end up as zeros as individuals who never listen to their
inner voice, their inner intuition, their own reason. And the
tragedy of this for society is that a million zeros joined together
add up to zero and not even to one.
We live today following secondhand information rather than listening
to our own inner voice.
When Buckminster Fuller, who is called the Leonardo da Vinci of our
time, was at the point of ending his young life due to frustration,
he heard a voice within that said to him, "never again -- never let
anyone push you, in any direction, not in harmony with your own
nature."
And he left that "torpid, mindless mass" of human sheep on that date
and went on to become one of the creative giants of history.
The question for you again: Why are so many millions willing and
eager to turn their mind/brain, soul/spirit -- their very lives --
over to outside authorities?
William Edelen is a former minister at the First Congregational
Church in Tacoma, Wash. and lecturer for the Department of Religion
at the University of Puget Sound. He lives in Palm Springs. Readers
may e-mail him at: edelen@sprintmail.com.



 

WILLIAM EDELEN ESSAYS




WILLIAM EDELEN / COMMENTARY 
Articles

Einstein Quotes




#1 - I want to know God's thoughts... all the rest are details .
#2 -It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer .
#3 -The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and
the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.
#4 -Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and
knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
#5 -Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift .
#6 -We should take care not to make the intellect our god ; it has , of course
, powerful muscles , but no personality .
#7 -Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for
other people .
#8 -A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are
based on the labors of others .
#9 -The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious ; it is the
fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
#10 -Only a life lived for others is a life worth while .
#11 -I have no special gift . I am only passionately curious .
#12 -Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with
their own hearts .
#13 -It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression
and knowledge .
#14 -Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable
gift and not as a hard duty .
#15 -Two things inspire me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral
universe within .
#16 -No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it .
#17 -Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre
minds .
#18 -Nothing will benefit human health or increase the chances for survival of
life on earth as the evolution to a vegetarian diet .
#19- I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as science can reveal it.
#20- Man will never be free until he is able to direct his emotions to think clearly. Only then can he control his environment and preserve his energy for creative work.

From Einstein and the Poet

In every naturalist there must be a kind of religious feeling; for he cannot imagine that the connections into which he sees have been thought of by him for the first time. He rather has the feeling of a child, over whom a grown-up person rules.

All that exists is based on a creative principle, and man's creative principle is his conscience.

He who considers himself grown-up and mature forfeits the wondering wisdom of a child.

It is only man's consciousness of what he does with his mind that elevates him above the animals, and enables him to become aware of himself and his relationship to the universe.

Philosophy is empty if it isn't based on science.

Death signifies nothing. The distinction between past,present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of the truth.







 

Mark Twain's Maxims





Maxims of Mark Twain 
All ideas are second hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.
Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.
Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary
necessaries.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in
society.
Do your duty today and repent tomorrow.
Do good when you can, and charge when you think they will stand it.
Difference between savage and civilized man: one is painted, the
other gilded.
Do not put off till tomorrow what can be put off till
day-after-tomorrow just as well.
Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but
particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
Etiquette requires us to admire the human race.
Everybody's private motto: It's better to be popular than right.
Every man is wholly honest to himself and to God, but not to any one
else.
Geological time is not money.
Good wine needs no bush; a jug is the thing.
God's noblest work? Man. Who found it out? Man.
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal
life.
Golden rule: Made of hard metal so it could stand severe wear, it
not being known at that time that butter would answer.


It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one
that unreservedly approves of him.
Necessity is the mother of "taking chances".

Nothing is made in vain, but the fly came near it.

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.

None but an ass pays a compliment and asks a favor at the same time.
There are many asses.
Optimist: Day-dreamer in his small clothes.
Optimist: Day-dreamer more elegantly spelled.
Optimist: Person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness.
Obscurity and a competence. That is the life that is best worth
living.

Pessimist: The optimist who didn't arrive.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old
optimist.
We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call
our principles.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under
differing conditions.

We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often
more than that in the presence of music without music.
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we
do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do
possess.
Wherefore being all of one mind, we do highly resolve that
government of the grafted by the grafter for the grafter shall not
perish from the earth.

 

Christianity and it's absurdities




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CHRISTIANITY - It's absurdities, contradictions and inhumanity

"Religion is corrosive to science. It teaches people to be satified with trivial, nonscientific, supernatural non explanations and blinds them to the real explanations that we have within our grasp. It teaches them to accept authority, revelation and faith instead of always insisting on evidence. "
Douglas Adams - quoted by Richard Dawkings

"Every man must choose for himself between conflicting vague probabilities." 
Charles Darwin


Steven Weinberg  - Nobel Prize winning Physicist
Beyond Belief - Salk Institute production
New Testament has no factual background. See video
Transcript - Religulous
Zeitgeist - The Greatest Story Ever told. See video
Solomons Temple - 80,000 people and 7 years to make a building smaller then McDonalds
William Edelin quotes from San Francisco Chronicle
Religulous script
Facts on religions of the world
Bible Inconsistancies and Contradictions
History - How did it start (from PBS)
Doomsday predictions
Phillip Larkin's Poem Church-going




RESOURCES FOR BIBLE CONTRADICTIONS:
BibViz

United States not based on Christianity by founding fathers:
 Also - a more neutral history of the US can be found at www.earlyamerica.com. This is a great history site. This site also talks about the secular traditions of the framers of the Constitution. They have a section I just found that has even more surprising information:  (Click here for article).

Jefferson Bible

QUOTES:
I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as science can reveal it.  - Einstein
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars. - Charles Darwin

The world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief.
- Richard Dawkings

If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry,misogyny,homophobia, violence and sheer ignorance as religion is,you'd resign in protest. -Bill Moyer

"I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology." - Thomas Jefferson



"God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak – and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful – which is equally foreign to god's nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?" - Epicurus 307 BC

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”  - Gautama Siddharta (Buddha) 

"Irrational faith is feeding murderous intolerance throughout the world." 
- Richard Dawkings

"We live in the shadow of a religiously inspired terror in an era where science has plainly shown religious superstitions plainly to be false." - Richard Dawkings

"The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The hear and now is all we have, an inspiration to make the most of it. So atheism is life affirming in a way religion can never be. Look around you, nature demands our attention, begs us to explore, to question. Religion can only provide facile unltimately unsatisfying answers. Science in constantly seeking real explanations, reveals the true majesty of our world in call it's complexity. People sometime say there must be something more to this world to this life. But, what more do you want?" -
- Richard Dawkings


Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg

"As long as it is acceptable for a person to believe that he knows how God wants everyone on earth to live, we will continue to murder one another on account of our beliefs." - Sam Harris

The various forms of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people to be equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful. —
EDWARD GIBBON, DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man. - Thomas Paine

"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."    — Thomas Paine (1737-1809), american writer and activist.

I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no super-human authority behind it.
- Einstein

To “choose” dogma and faith over doubt and experiment is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.
- Christopher Hitchens

The scientific world view so much more exciting, more poetic, more filled with wonder then anything in the poverty stricken arsenals of religious imagination.
- Richard Dawkings

"As long as it is acceptable for a person to believe that he knows how God wants everyone on earth to live, we will continue to murder one another on account of our beliefs."
- Sam Harris

"The history of Christianity is principally a story of mankind's misery and ignorance rather than of it requited love of God."
- Sam Harris

"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings. " anonymous

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty."
- Thomas Jefferson 

"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. " - Thomas Paine

Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking.It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith and enable and elevate it are our intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do.
-Bill Moyer



My statement
Only our own love and not condemnation of other people will produce lasting friendships.

95% of the world believe in one of 5000 gods.
This fact is frightening in light of the atomic age. I would hope a more rational demeanor will be guiding our world. Otherwise, we will be have a self-fulfilling prophesy that does not require a religion. The Islamic, Jewish and Christian beliefs stem from a central belief that we are somehow different from the whole of our universe. This has led the western half of our world in constant wars regarding who the chosen people are. Such systems of beliefs have spawned cultures that now carry the power to destroy our very planet. No god will have done it. It is the believers I fear most!


CONCLUSION: Religion IS a sin. It contaminates the mind with absurdities and irrationalism to allow social control. It is principally based on intolerance that produces the hate and fear we see in the world today.

Religion divides. Science unifies.

Bible Contradictions




Virgin Birth - Only mentioned in Mathew and Luke
The apostle Paul says that Jesus "was born of the seed of David" (Romans 1:3).
This was to fulfill the prophesy that the messiah was to come from the seed of David - Joseph
This clearly is a contradiction. If Jesus had been born of a virgin, one would expect such a unique and defining revelation to be mentioned frequently throughout the New Testament. This is not the case. In fact, his birth is mentioned in only two of the 27 books that make up the New Testament.

Herod's Census - According to Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1). According to Luke, Jesus was born during the first census in Israel, while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:2). This is impossible because Herod died in March of 4 BC and the census took place in 6 and 7 AD, about 10 years after Herod's death. (seeWikipedia)

Authors of Gospel - The Gospel was written 70 to 100 years after death. It was not even written by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John - See Wikepedia for this well known fact. In an age when very few wrote or even read, it is very unlikely any account written a century after the fact would have any accuracy.



HERE ARE A FEW MAJOR CONTRADICTIONS:
Did Jesus, Mary, and Joseph go to Egypt or Nazareth?
Matthew 2:14
When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt.
Luke 2:39
And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.


When did Jesus get Crucified ?
BEFORE PASSOVER at 6 am
John 18:28
Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover.
John 19:14-16
And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, "We have no king but Caesar."  Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified.
 
AFTER PASSOVER at 3am
Mark 14:12
And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the passover, his disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat the passover?
Mark 15:25
And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.
And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.
Jesus eats last supper in Matthew but in John Jesus is traded for Barrabas BEFORE the famous Passover last supper event. Festival of unleavened bread starts the day after Passover and lasts a week. Exodus 13:3-16




Morality
Slavery is encouraged
  • LEVITICUS 25:45-46 "Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, . . . and they shall be your possession . . . they shall be your bondmen forever."
Jesus asks disciples to leave their families and hate them.
  • Luke 14:26 ""If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own life--such a person cannot be my disciple."
Jesus promotes violence: Buy a sword?? Hardly turning the other cheek....
  • "He said to them, 'But now if you have a purse, take it and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. (Luke 22:36)"
Working on Sabbath - picking up sticks - penalty is death
  • Numbers 15:32-35, “And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him. And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses.”
Rape is Okay - as long as you pay father a fee:
  • Deuteronomy 22:28-29“If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days."
It is okay to kill and keep sex slaves - as long as they are not Jewish.

The slaughter of the Midianites in the Promised Land. "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves." (Numbers 31:14-18, NRSV

Why believe something so utterly ridiculous? Even the mainstay foundation of Judeo-Christianity runs completely afoul of logic and easily refuted by it's own immoral history. 

Hitler

“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a
fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded
by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and
summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest
not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian
and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord
at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the
Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight
against the Jewish poison." Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich on April 12, 1922


“I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of
the Almighty Creator.”
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp. 46]
“What we have to fight for…is the freedom and independence of the
fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission
assigned to it by the Creator.”
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp. 125]
“This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the
practical existence of a religious belief.”
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.152]

 The Catholic Church promoted the 3rd Reich early on and even celebrated Hitler's Birthday on April 20th with the signing of the famous  Reichskonkordat 


BIBLE MEMES