The Summum religious sect located in Pleasant Grove, Utah believe in mummification and the “Seven Aphorisms of Summum”.  I have no doubt that they are just another wacky American made religious sect that stole a few key ideas from a larger religion.  Of course the same thing can be said of the Mormons, who most people misidentify as protestants.

This legal debacle centers around the Summum who want to erect a three foot tall granite monument that has their Seven Aphorisms on it in the public park.  This is a clear cut use of a public area displaying a permanent religious monument on public property which I am totally against.  This is the first argument the town leaders make.  The snafu here is the park has had a Ten Commandments monument since 1971.  When asked about that the town leaders said it was a matter of public discretion revealing that the Ten Commandments were part of their towns social norm, but the Summum Aphorisms weren’t.  Sounds like a clear cut case of Mormons hating minorities again.

What really is at stake here is freedom of speech.  The court has so many times recently said they won’t provide hard and fast rules or even general guidelines when it comes to anything religious prefering a case by case approach.  Considering the current makeup of the court this case ought to be a doozy.  If the court sides with the town they effectively say that any town has the right to quash minority religious opinions from being expressed in same manner they allow they allow the expression of majority opinions.  If the high court sides with the Summum they are saying that the government must put aside the majority believe and lend equal weight to each and every minority opinion.  Either way this decision which will probably come out in the spring has long reaching effects for us all.

In the end though the mayor of Pleasant Grove sums up what he thinks will happen if the court sides with the Summum.

2 religious groups take battle over monument to Supreme Court – CNN.com

“Governments would need to either remove every and all monuments or permanent standing features, clear up to the Statute of Liberty. Or we would have to allow anybody and everybody to come in and erect a monument in any public spot, even if the place filled up where there was no room left.”

Apparently it has yet to occur to them that simply removing the Ten Commandments would solve all the problems.  Should the town lose though, I wonder just how fast that monument will come down.  Perish the thought of good Mormons like those of Pleasant Grove ever being subjected to the public display of a minority opinion…

The second failure of reason springs from the first.  Reasonable people understand how badly people who do not believe in the God of Abraham much less any religion at all are treated.  They reason it is better to say they believe no matter how silly the story sounds to them or what they know to be true rather than risk being an outcast.  Historically those who didn’t believe were right to be afraid. Non-belief in every religion on Earth is seen as some form of heresy which often carries a death sentence.  Hate crimes against non-believers and heretics didn’t begin with modern radicals or even the Inquisition or the Romans killing Jews and Christians.  If you believe the Jesus story, he was killed for not preaching the locally branded form of Judaism.  In other religions there is evidence that goes even further back.  Being marked as a non-believer and heretic then and now has its risks.  While modern religionists seldom kill those who don’t believe, at least in most modern industrialized nations, there are definite social, political, and economic actions taken against non-believers.

With those sanctions in mind people often times lie and say they believe to fit in with the group.  You never know when you might need a job and the guy interviewing you knows you don’t believe what he believes or as a politician or business man you might need the backing of a religious group to stay afloat.  People lie about having faith in God to get ahead and ensure their kids future.  People also often reason they can tell this lie publicly and hold their real beliefs in private.  The problem with this sort of reasoning is the more you lie, the easier it is to believe your own lie.  You eventually forget your original doubts and belief system, because the lie you tell every day becomes more real to you every time you tell it.  The psycho babble term for this phenomenon is self delusion. To paraphrase Hitler and exemplify the Bush administration, “the bigger the lie (and more of them) you tell, the easier it is to pass off them as the truth to otherwise reasonable people.”

The third failure of reason is when intelligent logical people try and reason away the parts of a religion they don’t agree with.  This might seem harmless or even a win for the non-believer, but it is the worst failure of reason.  When one looks at a religion as a whole system of beliefs and says, “this just doesn’t seem right”, logic dictates you discard the system in its entirety and begin anew much as you would a scientific theorem.  This is where reason separates out those that become non-believers, from those who want to believe in a certain quantity of religious ideals.  Those who stick with reason go back to the beginning which says, “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth”, and ask the question, “what is God” and come back with what amounts to a circular logic that always fails the test of reason.

When reason fails, the otherwise logical intelligent person skips that question and begins with, “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland,” and says this this is an allegory for God created the primordial soup from which all life on this planet began.  This type of psuedo-scientific reasoning allows for scriptural interpretation and accepts God as the undefinable term , much like X in an algebra equation.   This loosely based formulaic system also fails the equation breaks if you factor god(s) in multiples or as a null value. Those that accept this formula refuse to solve for X, they simply plot God on the graph in relation to what ever other variables they want to interpret for.

When the failure of reason allows otherwise logical intelligent people to start tossing out sections of a religion they don’t agree with and can’t abide by under the guise of this is where the Bible should be interpreted rather than taken literally, it justifies the stupid, hateful, and prejudicial who do the same.  When one group argues Genesis is meant to be interpreted, but Mark is to be taken literally, it justifies those who eat shellfish and pork, but scream they hate fagots, or scream abortion is wrong but disregard thou shalt not kill when it is convenient for their purposes.  This system of floating interpretation fails all simple straightforward logic tests making it the biggest of failures of reason.

In the modern era religion still exists for three reasons.  Religion exists because logical intelligent people failed the test of reason.  Religion exists because logical intelligent people let fear or greed trump reason.  Religion exists because faith can’t be argued against, and faith is the bastion of the unintelligent and illogical who believe actual thinking is too much effort and wrong for mere mortals to do.  In the end religion continues to exist and will likely exist until it causes us to exterminate ourselves.  With any luck that won’t be until long after my existence has ended.

I won’t say we deserved to be attacked in that manner. Those individuals who died had done nothing to deserve what they got or at least how they got it.We, as a political entity, had earned a big response.If you want to know why Muslim political entities be they the legitimate state, political faction, or terrorist group, then you need look no further than Yahoo.

FALLUJAH, Iraq — At the western entrance to the Iraqi city of Fallujah Tuesday, Muamar Anad handed his residence badge to the U.S. Marines guarding the city. They checked to be sure that he was a city resident, and when they were done, Anad said, a Marine slipped a coin out of his pocket and put it in his hand.
Out of fear, he accepted it, Anad said. When he was inside the city, the college student said, he looked at one side of the coin. “Where will you spend eternity?” it asked.
He flipped it over, and on the other side it read, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16.”
“They are trying to convert us to Christianity,” said Anad, a Sunni Muslim like most residents of this city in Anbar province. At home, he told his story, and his relatives echoed their disapproval: They’d been given the coins, too, he said.

When we pull shit like this it doesn’t win the hearts and minds of the people we conquered, it pisses them off. I know many of you are going to say it was the Marines duty as Christians. Well get it through your fucking heads, the people who flew airliners into skyscrapers or suicide bomb our people every day think that is their religious duty as well.

Now the military will tell you flat out that proselytizing of any kind of any religion is against the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but I doubt anything will be done to those responsible for this. The military simply is too pro-Christian to let anything horrible happen to them. Of course then again someone in the administration could decide to make them the sacrificial lamb as they have done any number of times to the average American.

It isn’t just our proselytizing of religion that makes their reactionaries angry, it is our culture. If we simply said here is your money please deliver the oil on time at this price we would seldom have a problem with them. We don’t however. We continually stick our noses into places they simply don’t belong and tell other people how they should act. That doesn’t promote change, that pisses people off, It pisses them off enough they will fly airliners into sky scrapers.

I have said it before there is a solution, but too few want to embrace it. We don’t change their culture by rushing in, changing the leadership, putting Starbucks on every corner, a Fredericks of Hollywood in every mall, and a church on every block. We affect change by opening our doors and laying out a welcome mat for these people. Hell we give them a ride home if they want it. Once they’re here every religion in the country can knock on the door and hand them what ever kind of crap they will take. They will become Americans soon enough, even learning to tell you where to stick your copy of the Watch Tower. Those changes will eventually make their way back to the countries of origin where change can happen from within just like it should. But alas too many people are afraid of being minorities, especially the more affluent white people of America, who always want to export American ideology.

One the most distasteful acts the man has carried out recently has been to buy a plot of land in Laramie Wyoming where he plans to erect a museum celebrating the murder of Matthew Shepard other gay murdered gays.  This is a man whose hatred runs deep. Despite the fact that we have freedom of speech in this country, I really wish the people he preaches ought to be killed as affronts to his bible, would walk up and put a bullet through his head.  Assassination, whether public or private, has long been a means of political change in the world.  A few less Fred Phelps in the world would wouldn’t bother me in the slightest.  He and his followers might think of him a martyr for dying that way, but it isn’t anything a few more bullets wouldn’t fix.

Remember they consider us Left Wing Radicals, why not do something radical to affect change rather than sitting on your asses and debating how much you are oppressed.

Buy your Fred Phelps Ware Here!

Refinance Your Soul - Easy Terms Read The Small Print and Fine Details. (No Guarantees or Factual Reporting Required)

From the bowels of Hell and boardrooms of Wall Street a plan was hatched to steal your soul and economic freedom, but if you just show up at church and dip into your pocket to pay for some good works you can refinance your tired old soul.  That is the bullshit the American religious establishment  wants you to believe.  Don’t buy into it without reading all the disclaimers, small print, and making sure you get a legally defensible written guarantee with the names of a few good lawyers specializing defending idiots.

From Reuters:

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) – From billion-dollar ponzi schemes to bad mortgages and pay-to-play dealings by public officials, some are asking: Is there a crisis of ethics in America?

The swirl of corruption, fraud and greed stretching from Wall Street to Main Street has many U.S. church leaders saying the answer is a resounding yes — America is facing not only an economic meltdown, but also a moral one. And they are rushing to bring flocks back into the fold.

I actually agree that there is a problem with ethics, but the religious establishment isn’t going to want to hear my thoughts on the subject.  First off, herding the sheep back to church and letting them graze together is not going to fix the situation.  Secondly fleecing the sheep by those telling them it was for their own good won’t change the situation.

“Honesty is honesty. It doesn’t matter if you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever. A lot of these debacles we’re seeing can be traced and sourced back to a lack of good old ethics,” said the Rev. Jerry Johnston, who this month launched a 12-part series of sermons on ethics at First Family Church in Overland Park, Kansas, which has about 5,000 members.

Johnston is one of a number of religious leaders and scholars who say the current spate of troubled times are an opportunity to lead more Americans into church pews and to prayer.

I do so love it when the religious establishment talks about honesty.  There isn’t a more corrupt dishonest institution in the world than organized religion.  No surprise they preach honesty, but are unable practice the same thing.  Having read the literature from the big three religions and some of their off shoot cults, I am sort of glad most of them don’t actually hold faith to their sacred words.  If they did we would be mightily fucked.

If the religious establishment, including this fucknut from Missouri, want me to believe they value honesty,  I want a little from them.  I want them to stand up and say we don’t know anything about god for sure, including if he exists, but we want you to come to church so we can increase our power base through you.  It will be okay if they say we don’t know but we have faith, but the “we don’t know” clause must be included.

If they claim to have special knowledge about the existence of god that can be proven, I want them to openly and honestly share it with us.  I want a qualified body of scientists and laymen alike to test their so called proof.  If they can prove it I am sold and will call up The Pope and personally beg forgiveness and ask for absolution.  I will even throw in the towel and go celibate.  More importantly if they can prove their is a god to my standards, I will do something harder than go without sex.  I will stand up in front everyone I have ever called a foolish idiot and say I was wrong.

Furthermore where this crusade for seat fillers will fail greatest is on the things the will bandy about most.  The will start with preaching hope that things will get better when there are enough seats filled.  Pretty soon things will start to get better for some of the flock, who will testify they had hope and things got better.  Pretty soon those people stop coming to make room for people without enough hope or because their life no longer seems like it sucks so bad.  The next thing they will preach is how those people are lost in the world again, and that the flock should use their power of persuasion to bring them back.  At first they will see it as a mission from god, but as soon as most of them see how those who aren’t giving up Sunday mornings, Wednesday evenings and part of their paycheck to god are doing they too will quit going too.  Last but not least the god bringers will use patriotism on their flock and tout the American Dream.  That is the biggest mistake of all.

When you inspire Americans with the American Dream, they don’t think what can I do for my country.  They don’t say what can I do for my neighbor.  They don’t say what can I give to the church.  The American Dream is just that, a dream.  It is a dream every American has about how they can improve their lot in life.  Americans who dream big remember that they are the ones doing the dreaming.  The remember they aren’t there to be sheep counted at night by greedy shepherds.  They remember their dream to take control of their own life, not be led about like lambs to the slaughter.

Now is a time of change in this country.  We have a new president who just a generation ago would have been the pipe dream of minorities everywhere.  He dreamt the American dream and so did they, and they achieved their dream without any divine influence.  It is time for Americans to wake up and cast off their religious overseers and start to dream on their own and for themselves.

We are committed to living, as far as it is possible, by the moral precepts taught by Jesus Christ and by the whole counsel of God as revealed in the Bible.

What this really says is they are going to use whatever financial and political power they can muster to force you to live this way too.  What they fail to mention is when the scriptures says different things they will decide for you what it means and will try to force you to live by that rule to.

Right To Life: We believe that every human deserves the right to life—from conception to death—and that we do not have the right to kill unborn children nor to murder the elderly through active euthanasia. We do, however, support the death penalty.

Does anyone see the irony here?  I know this is a long standing argument so I won’t beat it to death other than to call them hypocrites by throwing their own words back at them.  “We believe that every human deserves the right to life.”  How does that fit in with the death penalty?  Men are foulable (and women according to the Old Testament are brain dead idiots incapable of thinking without their husband, son, father or brother doing most of it for them), this is proven by your notion that some people need to be killed.  If men are foulable, who then stands fit to judge whether a person should be put to death?  If evidence later proves the condemned and executed was not guilty do we let Biblical justice be carried out on the jurors, the prosecutors, the witnesses for the prosecution, the investigators (ie the police), the judge and the accuser/victim?  I believe an eye for an eye, and such would be the proscribed retribution here, but while they are at it we should make sure any punishment such as beatings and rapes dealt out by other prisoners while waiting to die should be answered for by these people to. What do you say?  It sounds fair in a traditional biblical sort of way doesn’t it?

We support the God-ordained institution of the family, which is a union of a man and woman, with or without children—and is based upon marriage, blood, or adoption.

I noticed they left out all the parts about casting aside barren wives, the ability to give back unsuitable brides, obedience to men, and most of all the polygamy that is so prevalent in the bible.  If Solomon was the wisest man of the bible, would not the rest of us men be wiser with extra wives, mistresses and concubines?

Religion Reaches Out To Teach Children Traditional Values. It some how forgot to make t-shirts saying women are the property of men.

Homosexual behavior is explicitly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments as an abomination and a violation of God’s standards for sexuality.

It is all well and good for them to condemn such behavior for Christians since it is pretty clear in Leviticus queer behavior just isn’t acceptable for those that believe.  I do notice the hypocrites left out all the other prohibitions and rituals of Leviticus as inconvenient reminders to the women and farmers they want the support of.  I am pretty sure the good and often highly conservative farm folk of Iowa would be less than supportive of the coalition if they were told that hog farming was going against the bible and put them in league with faggots.  Shall we also touch base on how Leviticus says women should act?  If you are unsure how women should act try reading the bible stories written for children.

We oppose the normalization of sodomy as well as cross-dressing and other deviant sexual behaviors in our culture.

They should make sure that they spell that out because in every traditional sense of cross dressing women who wear pants are exhibiting deviant sexual behavior and that must be opposed.

Frequently, this person (anyone who looks at porn) acts out his sexual fantasies by molesting children, raping girls, and committing other sexual crimes—including murder.

I am asking for their proof.  I am calling them to task and asking them to support this with proof not just their deluded and as I have proven (and will continue to prove) hypocritical sense of moral values.  Please show us the statistics that millions of us with Playboy subscriptions frequently go about raping, molesting, and murdering.  If I were to murder anyone over a Playboy it would be some religious fanatic who tried to keep me from exercising the free will they believe God gave me to make decisions for myself.

When fascism comes to America, it will be waving the flag and carrying a Bible.

Patriotism, Loyalty To Country, And Political Involvement: We believe that we are to be good citizens. This means we are loyal to our nation (not blind loyalty, however); we are to support our Armed Forces, law enforcement officials, and we should participate in the political process. We live in a free country but we will not remain free if we do not exercise our rights as citizens.

Let us decipher this.  “We are loyal to our nation, but not blindly loyal.”  The meaning is very clear.  They will be loyal so long as it suits their fanatic religious needs, but they will turn traitor, break the laws, and work against national interests if it doesn’t look to be in their interests.  “We support our armed forces, and law enforcement officials.”  Meaning without subverting these institutions the radical left might impose their will on us.  Alternate meaning by infiltrating these institutions we can use them to smite anyone who just doesn’t agree with us, not to mention use the military to spread the Christian word in the name of fighting terrorists.  “We should participate in the political process.” The meaning should be pretty clear to anyone who has witnessed the last sixteen years of religious fanatics trying to impose their religious agenda on the secular world through politics.  The last notion is not only laughable it is scary.  I can hardly believe they have the audacity to say the only way they can keep us a free country is buy using political activity to deny others their god given freewill.

It is never wrong when you think you are in the moral majority.

We support free enterprise, limited government, low taxes, and personal responsibility. We believe in self government, not self indulgence. We do not believe that the federal government should extend its power over every aspect of our lives. The best government is the one that governs the least.

This is easy to sort out.  Fuck employees, fuck anyone not in the majority, its our money fuck anyone that wants it, and anyone who can’t make it doesn’t deserve to make it because god doesn’t love them.  They believe the government should leave people alone, except when the government says it is okay to act in ways the coalition doesn’t like.  They want a weak federal government because it is the only power strong enough to protect minorities from mobs riled up by demagoguery.  Last but not least if those fucking liberals are in power we want them to stay out of our lives, but when we have the power we aren’t governing we are carrying out god’s will.

Religious Freedom: We are advocates of religious freedom. We believe the First Amendment to our Constitution gives all of us the right to freely exercise our religious faith and that religious faith is the cornerstone of freedom in this nation. Our Founding Fathers supported religion, purchased Bibles, established congressional chaplains, and sent missionaries to witness to the Indians. They enacted the First Amendment to protect religious freedom, not to stifle it

If you notice the wording, it says their religious freedom.  Fuck anyone who might get in their way or want to practice a different religion is The Coalition’s motto.  Simply put their version of Christianity, which would appall even the most devout of the Founding Fathers, is the only thing that matters.  Everyone else must step aside and shut up about their heresy and misinterpretations of the bible.  If these people want to claim religion was founding value in this country and therefore should persist to this day then they must also accept chattel slavery, subjugation of women, children and those with no property were also founding values and should be continued.  I would ask why aren’t these traditional value fanatics demanding we collar the president elect and his family until they can be sold off to the highest bidder, starting with his little girls first, then I remember how many of that group are calling for just that.

We believe in “discrimination” in the good sense: choosing between good and evil, right and wrong, the better and the best. We believe in discrimination in the sense of being discerning between good and bad choices.

It is easy to justify discrimination when you are the ones deciding what is good and what is evil, especially when you are convinced you are the only good people and anyone who believes differently than you is inherently evil.  In their mind the good choice is to shut up and do whatever they tell you to do.  The bad choice is to use the free will they claim god gave.

Not only are these people hypocrites, but they are fascists deceiving the public by waving a cross and wrapping themselves in the American flag.  They want to pull on your heart strings as much as on your puppet strings.  They will lead you where they want you to go and close the curtain on you if you desire to act of your own accord.  If you embrace their version of traditional values, you give up the most traditional of all values, freedom of choice.  They may claim they are only upholding tradition, but should we really be upholding the traditions of oppression simply because it is traditional?

The problem with most people who claim to be Christian are generic Christians with no church structure to their beliefs.  Those who belong to a specific brand name Christianity often don’t have a clue what the tenets of their church are either, which would be amusing if it weren’t so damned annoying.  Personally, I think if you are going to be a good Christian, you need to be believe in the bible as it is written.  This is your Holy Book and shouldn’t really be left to interpretation by someone else for you.  If you need help with the big words get two more big books called the dictionary and the thesaurus.  You should read it for yourself and follow it to the letter in every aspect.  Oh wait, you say there are things that you don’t like, aren’t going to follow, or contradict each other?  Well that doesn’t matter, if you want to be a Good Book Chrisitian then you must follow them all or you are guilty of heresy. I believe the punishment for that is a good old fashioned stoning and not the kind that would be any fun.  Of course should you claim to believe and follow it to the letter, then you are a hypocrite for believing in contradictory practices and following them as they suit you.

All of this brings us back to Christianity and queers.  Leviticus, which is part of the Bible, can’t be ignored at will because it is inconvenient.  No matter what any gay would-be-Christian I know says, you simply can’t accept one part of the Bible and decide to disregard the rest and still be a good Christian.  Good Christians simply can’t have Jesus’s love thy neighbor without also accepting Leviticus’s fagots, pork, and shellfish are bad. You especially can’t have broiled bacon wrapped crab leg pieces are good and fagots are bad.  It is all or nothing, which is why gay Christians make absolutely no sense.

It doesn’t even make sense for gays to say they believe in god.  Without the scripture that claims he exists there is no basis for believing in the divine.  If you say you have felt his presence and therefore know he exists, you either need to start your own religion, which isn’t christianity, or you need to have your meds adjusted.  If you honestly believe you were touched then you need to be telling people that and what message you think god wants you to pass along.  I can’t imagine him reaching out and touching someone without passing along a message. This would have been a conscious effort on his part, not like he bumped into you while trying to squeeze his shopping cart between you and a pallet of Pepsi.  Of course he could be letting you know you are obnoxious and decided to hip check out of spite, but my biblical readings lead me to believe that the almighty doesn’t participate in this sort of passive aggressive bullshit.  By all accounts he lets you know when you have pissed him off.  (see Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Jericho references for details)

In the end you can believe what you want.  I however will never understand how a resonably intelligen thiking human being can believe in God, much less call themselves a Christian with a straight face.

Holocaust survivors to Mormons: Stop baptisms of dead Jews – CNN.com

In 1995, Mormons and Jews inked an agreement to limit the circumstances that allow for the proxy baptisms of Holocaust victims. Ending the practice outright was not part of the agreement and would essentially be asking Mormons to alter their beliefs, church Elder Lance B. Wickman said Monday in an interview with reporters in Salt Lake City.

This practice is on the rise again and someone isn’t playing by the rules.  While I can understand how the Jews here feel about the Holocaust victims, which they have touchy feely emotions about since they share a common religious faith with some of them actually having kinship ties closer than thirty second cousins twice removed.  For Jews reverence for the Holocaust goes well beyond the reverence most of us should show for it.  However this is still a face palm WTF moment.

Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said:

“We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your
religion. We ask you to leave our six million Jews, all victims of
the Holocaust, alone, they suffered enough.”

That sounds reasonable until you look at the facts.  First off any properly reverent Jew doesn’t believe any other religion is right much less respect it.  The same can be said of all Christian sects, including Mormons.  You can respect another groups right to believe, but you don’t respect that belief, if you believe a counter religion.  Anyone who says they do is either a liar or an idiot.

Secondly when you look at the religion Ernst Michael claims to believe in they first off don’t acknowledge Jesus as the savior and Messiah.  Third, they don’t acknowledge that Christian baptism has any power over anything because the belief is false.  Fourth if they don’t accept Jesus was the messiah, much less that Christian baptism has any mean or power over this life or the next, then surely some religion nutcase getting dunked while standing in for some long dead Jew couldn’t affect anything. Could it?

In the end this story is either about two small issues or one big one  It is either about I’m a Jew and therefore a victim of every travesty in the world since the beginning of time or it is about those wacky Mormons showing they don’t care who they piss off in their quest for salvation and religious glory.  Alternately the whole thing is about religion being a complete waste of time and effort because it is all bullshit.

Do you like Sarah Plain believe the gay is caused by not praying enough?

This is just one of those things I don’t get about bible toting gays. You claim to be Christians, yet you, like so many Christians that hate gays, simply pick and choose the passages of the bible you want to believe and follow. There are a lot of good ideas in the bible don’t get me wrong, since I have a difficult ten year old I am really into honor thy father. This however doesn’t make me a Christian or even someone who pretends to be. There are a lot of good ideas in a lot of good books, believing a handful of them from any source doesn’t qualify you as a card carrying believer.

Please someone explain away what looks like delusional thinking on the part of so many of my gay friends?