ExChristian.Net -- encouraging ex-Christians

Secular Bible Study casts wide net

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:19:51 PDT

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Organized in part by Antlerman, a moderator in the Ex-Christian.Net Forum.

AntlermanAs if it's not unusual enough that Trinity United Methodist Church and the Minnesota Atheists have joined forces to promote a project, wait till you hear what the project is: a Bible study class.

Granted, it's not your normal one. At least, that's the hope. Called Secular Bible Study, the program aims to "foster and nurture relationships between folks who would otherwise avoid each other," said Chester O'Gorman, community outreach director for the northeast Minneapolis church. "Secular Bible Study hopes to attract a variety of people -- Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, Christians and even Jews and Muslims."

The weekly class will focus on the Bible's historical and cultural context. Organizers have drawn up a set of ground rules designed to keep participants from proselytizing, but that doesn't mean that they want to discourage disagreement. Just the opposite.

"We've discerned that people have lost or lack the skills to engage in constructive and respectful dialogue in the context of profound disagreement," O'Gorman said. "An emphasis will be placed on dialogue among the group of small groups."

The first meeting will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday in the Gold Room at Diamonds Cafe, 1618 Central Av. NE. The class is free. Bibles will be provided, but participants are encouraged to bring their own. No particular version is recommended. In fact, O'Gorman is hoping to use a wide array of versions as a conversation starter.
Organ grinder

The Church of St. Peter in North St. Paul has a new organ, and to show it off, organist Rodney Barbour will offer a free workshop today and a free concert Sunday.

Barbour, director of music at John Wesley United Methodist Church in Cincinnati, is known for workshops he presents for the American Guild of Organists. His trademark is encouraging musicians to "think outside the Bachs."

OK, that's corny, but he gets away with it because he really knows his stuff. The workshop, which is open to all but will focus primarily on tips for church music directors, is at 10 a.m. today. The concert is at 3 p.m. Sunday. The church is at 2600 N. Margaret St.
All that jazz

Lent begins Wednesday, and for part of the Christian community, that involves fasting. But for many people, fasting is not an option -- it's an economic reality.

To help people who fall into that category, Minnetonka United Methodist Church is throwing a Fat Tuesday jazz party to raise money for ICA (Intercongregation Communities Association) Foodshelf, which combats hunger in the western suburbs.

You don't have to be Methodist to attend. You don't even have to like jazz, although it helps. Since launching a weekly jazz service two years ago, the church has become a gathering spot for both musicians and fans.

The party runs from 5 to 8 p.m. Tuesday and includes a pancake supper. Admission is $5, with ages 8 and under free and a $15 maximum per family. The church is on County Road 101 between Hwy. 7 and Minnetonka Blvd.

Don't Tell Me I Believe in Nothing

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:52:55 PDT

By Bret P --

Our family recently welcomed my first niece into the world. This is the first child among my siblings, and I don't have any kids of my own (parenthood isn't in my immediate future either). I can tell you that I couldn't be more thrilled or amazed at the miracle of life. Yes, I said miracle.

Image by melinal via Flickr

Does it sound a little mystical? It might sound strange coming from someone who is a committed atheist, but I think one of the gross misconceptions of non-religious people is that somehow we're incapable of wonder or amazement.

The path from Christian fundamentalist to moderate, agnostic then ultimately atheist, has been an interesting (and freeing) journey to say the least, but it hasn't been without its share of conflict and hurt feelings. I've had plenty of accusations hurled my way, and while many are more entertaining than insulting, I actually get a little irritated when someone tells me that I believe in nothing or have no purpose, simply because I don't believe in god.

I can only speak for myself, not other non-believers. I believe in a lot of things. Generally I believe in things that are factual and based in reality, and try to reject beliefs that are not. So what do I believe?

I believe that all we have is now. Even if an afterlife exists, there's no evidence for it, therefore I choose not to live my life under the assumption that there is one. I try to enjoy life in the moment, because, as far as we know, we only get one shot. Whether there is eternity waiting for me or not, doesn't matter. This is the only life and reality I can tangibly perceive.

"If it is to be, then it is up to me."

Cheesy quote I know, but that's a reality of giving up on the idea of divine providence. I don't think there's a cosmic guiding hand that cares about my well being (or anyone else's for that matter). With that assumption, I have to make the best of the situation, work hard to get what I want, and do my part to leave this world a better place than I came into it.

I believe that all we have is now. [...] I don't think there's a cosmic guiding hand that cares about my well being (or anyone else's for that matter). I believe that factual evidence is the best way we can really know what's real and what's not. How do we know that Santa Clause is not real? This might be a stupid question, but if you apply the same scrutiny to Jesus Christ you'll get the same result, but with far more angry resistance. Apparently an ancient text with mystery authors and no significant secular historical correlation has more authority than Moore's poem "Twas The Night Before Christmas". Willfully believing in things that have no basis in reality doesn't help us understand our world better.

I believe that we don't need to have a personal relationship with a deity to have purpose or be happy. We exist in this modern era, lucky enough to perceive and understand our world. If being a speck in the universe seems insignificant, think about all the odds of us actually being here, let alone you as an individual.

I believe in the love of friends and family. There is such a thing as unconditional love, but that depends on who we surround ourselves with. Certainly the human condition isn't perfect, but I can't help but believe that we'd progress faster if we tried to understand human motivations, instead of making rigid judgments.

I believe we need to constantly challenge the information we're given. With all the propaganda out there about world disasters, war, terror, and other life's tragedies, the truth is that we live in the safest era of human civilization. Technology has allowed news to travel at the speed of light, and we're bombarded by it. That doesn't help our perception, but put it in perspective. We can't afford to live in fear.

When I held my niece for the first time and looked into her eyes, I saw the miracle of human existence. I'm more than optimistic for her future. She's going to have the benefit of growing up without fundamentalist superstition or dogma. She's been born into a loving household with exceptional family support.

I can't help but have the opinion that simply being here, being loved, and having the freedom to pursue what we love is enough to fulfill the proverbial human soul. I look forward to the day when we can enjoy life for what it is, instead of looking for something imaginary to fill some perceived void. I may be without a belief in the supernatural, but my life is full of purpose, wonder, and amazement anyway.

Celebrating life beyond belief

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:38:23 PDT

From The Australian:

THEY came from everywhere, the true unbelievers: from Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast, New Zealand and beyond. There was a honeymooning couple from North Carolina who had met on an atheist internet site; and two friends from rural NSW, both extroverted women who had been raised Catholics and were now seriously annoyed with it.

Author Richard Dawkins had a few words to
say about the sanctification of Mary MacKillop.

An Iranian man who had seen unspeakable things done in the name of religion asked a speaker, philosopher A.C. Grayling, how it was that humans could be so kind and yet torture and kill each other.

An Iraqi who migrated to Australia 40 years ago gave $4000 of his money to support this unusual gathering: the 2010 Global Atheists Convention, held in Melbourne at the weekend.

The idea of atheists congregating seems counterintuitive. After all, they are defined only by an absence, a belief they don't have. But congregate they did, their numbers reaching 2500 yesterday, at the Melbourne Convention Centre on a perfect autumn day.

"But what will you talk about - nothing?" someone had asked David Nicholls, president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia and co-convener of the conference. Far from it: most sessions ended before the audience was ready to let the speaker go. Nicholls had been asked, he said in his opening remarks, whether delegates were going "to worship the devil, or plot world domination", and it wasn't clear whether he was joking.

Related Coverage

Dawkins preaches to the deluded against the divine The Australian,
We atheists are not all godforsakenHerald Sun,
Losing my religion Herald Sun,
Extremism is ugly Herald Sun,
Reader's Comments: Scientist creates 'Shroud of Turin' in lab NEWS.com.au,

Perhaps one genuine aim was the luxury of being surrounded by the like-minded. "Isn't it a magnificent feeling to be in the majority?", he asked the assembly.

It was a high-spirited gathering. People were unusually interested in conversation with strangers. There were fewer white-haired men with beards and axes to grind than one might have expected, more fashionably dressed 20- and 30-somethings with a sharp line in reasoning.

The convention was the brainchild of Stuart Bechman, a political activist and president of Atheist Alliance International. Bechman was at college when he lost his Arizona family's mild Methodist beliefs. He lived with the loss for years, he said, before discovering that there were many people like him and some had organised into groups. A political activist by nature, he threw himself into it.

"Half the atheists I know were raised that way," Bechman told The Australian. "The other half came out of a religious background and the demeanours of the two camps are very different. I think those who come from a religious background often come with anger for having been deceived or betrayed in some way, or they are just closer to it and they see the harm that is done."

He decided to get organised, in part, because he saw "a need to counter that harm". His brother ultimately broke with the family when he joined a fundamentalist church. Bechman's aim, he said, is to help atheists build a community of science and reason and critical thinking.

He has been mounting conventions in the US where, he said, there isn't as much hostility as less religious Australians might expect. He decided the conventions should go global and invited Australia to stage the first on another continent.

It sold out. The venues on the first two days were smaller, the result of caution. The organisers chanced a bigger hall yesterday when Richard Dawkins was invited to speak, but could have sold more tickets on Saturday, when philosophers Grayling and Tomas Pataki and the hilarious American biology lecturer and science blogger P.Z. Myers gave talks.
The crowd was hardcore. Few gasped when comedians - lesbian former Mormon Sue-Ann Post, ex-Catholic columnist Catherine Deveny and the New York writer, radio host and stand-up comic Jamie Kilstein - blasphemed without restraint. (Dawkins succeeded in provoking gasps when he referred to the pope as a Nazi.)

Grayling was received like a rock star; the crowd shouted with laughter when Myers spoke. Pataki's denser argument - an atheist himself, he cautioned against the prevailing wish to see religion fade away - was received more quietly, with bemusement. He spoke of people's emotional need to be heard and loved by a non-existent personal deity, if no real person could fill the role.

The least atheist of the speakers was bioethicist Leslie Cannold, who claimed to be agnostic and a cultural Jew, and raised plenty of laughs notwithstanding. The other speakers were tougher in their opposition to religion, though most nodded respectfully toward progressive religious people who cared for the poor and sick. The wealth of established religions, and of contemporary hucksters who invented their own, came under repeated attack.

The mood sobered when Taslima Nasrin arrived and three dark-suited security men arranged themselves around the base of the stage.

The Bangladeshi writer and women's rights activist, who was exiled from her homeland 14 years ago, then physically attacked in India when she sought refuge in Bengal, placed under house arrest and finally hounded out of there too, still has several fatwas hanging over her and a price on her head. India, the country that likes to think of itself as the largest democracy in the world, she pointed out, placed the religious rights of its Muslim minority above her freedom of expression.

She recalled her doubts about religion as a child, and how she troubled her mother with questions: why do we have to pray in Arabic - if God is omniscient, can't he understand our prayers in Bengali?
She was six when her mother told her her tongue would fall off if she said anything against God.

Already the empirical scientist (she is a doctor), she locked herself in the bathroom, said "God is a son of a bitch", "God is a pig" and other choice Bengali epithets, and then waited in front of the mirror. After a few minutes, she knew that what her mother said wasn't true.

She saw through the inconsistencies in the Koran, she said, the first time she read it, in translation in Bengali. "All religion, but particularly Islam, is for the interests and comfort of men," she said, "Why would women believe in any religion?"
Women who wore the burka could not be feminists, she said in answer to a question, because they subscribed to the idea that women were sex objects responsible for the uncontrollable passions of men. "Women have desires, too, but that doesn't lead to men covering up," she said.

Later a panel of Australian women, including former senator Lyn Allison ("Ever wondered why God is a bloke?"), social commentator Jane Caro ("Religion has made women over-responsible and men under-responsible, which stops us all from growing up"), and Tanya Levin, a former member of the Hillsong Church ("I'm finally getting to hang out with the grown-ups this weekend"), spoke of the experience of Australian women.

Myers took issue with the notion of a good and all-knowing God, suggesting that if "God is so powerful he refuses to be bound by some arbitrary demand like he make a goddamn difference in the world", couldn't he have given us some useful suggestions at least? "Like `Wash your hands'? We waited till the 19th century for doctors to learn that. Instead we got in the Bible a detailed order to snip off the ends of our penises."

John Perkins, an economist who works on resource depletion and global warming, spoke on the connection between Islam and terror. He shared Nasrin's security detail.

Peter Singer, the famous Australian philosopher who commutes between the universities of Melbourne and Princeton, spoke of the ethical world as inhabited by both believers in God and non-believers.

The golden rule, common to all religions, also predates them: it is a function of our development as humans who feel pain, take time to raise our helpless young, live in social groups and need to co-operate, he suggested.

As for the more rigorous rules of the New Testament, such as the order that the rich give away their possessions to the poor, there are a lot of very rich Christians around who are clearly giving little thought to the future of their souls, he said. Americans who, according to polling, are far more religious than Europeans, don't even approach the welfare measures largely secular Scandinavian societies take to protect the vulnerable in their society.

Singer also pointed out that three of the four great philanthropists of the 20th century were professed atheists: Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Andrew Carnegie. (The exception was Nelson D. Rockefeller, a Protestant.)

Speaking of money, no tier of government funded the conference: the organisers and speakers worked gratis and depended on the charity of well-wishers for the unavoidable costs. Much was made of this by some speakers: the federal government gave $20 million towards the Catholic World Youth Day last year, and the Victorian government gave $4.5m towards the Parliament of World Religions - but in this supposedly secular society, requests for funding an atheist conference were turned down.
There was much talk too of the chaplaincy system in supposedly secular government schools, begun by the Howard government and expanded by the Rudd government. Ian Robinson, president of the Rationalist Society of Australia, pointed out that, of course, harassed principals would say it was a good idea when polled: a chaplain represents an extra person on the ground. What might the principals have said, Robinson asked, if they were told, "We have a few extra thousand dollars - would you like a nurse, a social worker, or a chaplain?"

Robinson finished his speech with a quote from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, another educated, outspoken and formerly Muslim woman with the price of apostasy on her head. "The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance," she wrote, "is atheism."

The final speaker was, of course, Dawkins. The biologist gave a nuanced lecture on the wonder of evolution and the sense of gratitude even atheists feel for the glories of the material world. He also lived up to his reputation for bluntness, with remarks equally sharp towards Catholics and Muslims. Asked about the sanctification of Mary MacKillop and the uncritical way it had been reported, he paused as if lost for words.

"The idea of creating saints today is pure Monty Python," he eventually said. "It completely gives the lie to the claim that sophisticated theologians can look down on the fundamentalist wingnuts. They're all the same."

As for dialogue with Islamists, he said it was "a remarkably effective tactic to say `If you try to argue against me, I'll cut your head off' ", but that the argument came from a position of intellectual weakness.

"I don't think we should go out of our way to insult Islam because it doesn't do any good to get your head cut off," he continued. "But we should always say that I may refrain from publishing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed, but it's because I fear you. Don't for one moment think it's because I respect you."

Think Rationally

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:11:43 PDT

Here is a short commercial demonstrating the futility of searching for ALL of life’s answers in an arcane text. At the end of the video, a suggestion is made as to what should be done with said text.

0

Just a book

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:08:38 PDT

A bible thumper learns his lesson...

Imagine

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:18:44 PDT

Imagine no religion

Some thoughts on God

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 05:40:23 PDT

By Jeremiah --

I realized I could not be a Christian, Catholic or any other thing that associates itself with the Bible when I read the Old Testament. I could see "god" is depicted as a racist

Image by foxspain via Flickr

who practices genocide and makes curses that harm innocent people. I mean, the god described in the Bible is no better than Hitler.

I also don't understand how anyone can believe in heaven or hell. Infinity and change are one, so how can there be any such places as heaven or hell. Moreover, why should someone go to hell and spend an eternity there for something they did in this life? People make mistakes and are born into bad circumstances; they develop misconceptions about life or what its about. My point is this: What if you did go to hell and you eventually came to the understanding of your wrong? It doesn't matter?! You're there forever with no chance of redemption?!

I believe that if there is a god who knows everything about anyone than he knows what's wrong with people who do "evil" and he should be able to understand and also know how to coach people away from their "evil" rather than putting them away in a torture chamber... forever.

Lastly, how arrogant is a god who claims that I would be committed to hell for not praying to him personally? God should be happy no matter what name I call him as long as I try my best always to be my best and do what is right, just and humane.

Our tracts are blank

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 05:26:12 PDT

By houndie --

Sitting at my computer today, happily perusing ex-c, and I heard a light knock at the front door. I didn't answer it because I had heard all the neighborhood doggies doing the "someone's about" bark, so I figured somebody had landed the thankless task of selling gym memberships or home security systems door to door.

Once the person was gone I peeked out to see who it was -- no one I knew. I opened the door a tic and found a flier from a local church stuck on the door. I quickly round-filed it.

Hubby and I were talking about it later, and he said I should have talked to the guy. "We don't believe that stuff, so we should let them know it and why," he said.

This morning I was not in the mood to talk to anyone, let alone an eager churchgoer promoting the latest windbag of the week. But it does make me wonder -- should we, as non-believers, be out there like the believing denominations? Should we be knocking on doors and handing out tracts denouncing the plagiarized mish/mash that is the Christian faith? Or should we value our good dental work and fine features and keep it on the downlow?

Papa Pedophile The Pimp

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:53:16 PDT

By dealdoctor --

A Scientology Suppressive

Image by StephenMcleod - 6x6 or death via Flickr

The New York Times Online www.nytimes.com recently has been full of the nightmare that is religion. Today we hear the testimony of a woman who was psychologically captured by Scientology and was forced to choose between remaining in the organized church and losing her husband. Why such an unnatural choice? It gets worse.

http://tinyurl.com/yhf9qye

Papa Pedophile?

In the same issue we read about the present Pope’s decision, when an Archbishop in Germany, to allow reinstatement into parish ministry of a known pedophile priest, who later was charged and convicted of additional sexual abuse of more children. With all the pedophiles in the priesthood should we change his title from Pope to Papa Pedophile?

http://tinyurl.com/yzpyray

Papa Pimp?

Perhaps Papa Pimp would be a more apt title because the March 4th 2010 issue of the Times reported a gay prostitution ring right at the Vatican. This prostitution ring included a ceremonial usher and a member of the elite choir in St. Peter’s Basilica. All this makes one wonder exactly why they named it St. Peter’s in the first place doesn’t it?

http://tinyurl.com/yfrsrf2

It sounds to me like the Scientology girl is not the only one who is a suppressive or should we say a repressive? The celibate Catholic priest, just like Christi King the Scientology girl, is forced to choose between a religious organization and a spouse. That kind of choice is just is not natural and- nature always wins. Whatever is unnaturally suppressed or repressed will not be held down forever and when it does arise it will not be controlled very well. No need for us to worry our little laypeople heads about the proper term (repressed or suppressed) for the priestly clients of the gay whore ring at the Vatican. I am sure, as with all things dealing with the Vatican, Father, I mean Papa, knows best. But it is kind of strange how they call him Papa when he dresses like Mama!

Pope under fire for transfer, letter on sex abuse

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:49:12 PST

VATICAN CITY – Germany's sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese acknowledged it transferred a suspected pedophile priest while Benedict was in charge and criticism is mounting over a 2001 Vatican directive he penned instructing bishops to keep abuse cases secret.

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The revelations have put the spotlight on Benedict's handling of abuse claims both when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977-1982 and then the prefect of the Vatican office that deals with such crimes — a position he held until his 2005 election as pope.

Benedict got a firsthand readout of the scope of the scandal Friday in his native land from the head of the German Bishop's Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, who reported that the pontiff had expressed "great dismay and deep shock" over the scandal, but encouraged bishops to continue searching for the truth.

Hours later, the Munich archdiocese admitted that it had allowed a priest suspected of having abused a child to return to pastoral work in the 1980s, while Benedict was archbishop. It stressed that the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger didn't know about the transfer and that it had been decided by a lower-ranking official.

The archdiocese said there were no accusations against the chaplain, identified only as H., during his 1980-1982 spell in Munich, where he underwent therapy for suspected "sexual relations with boys." But he then moved to nearby Grafing, where he was suspended in early 1985 following new accusations of sexual abuse. The following year, he was convicted of sexually abusing minors.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, issued a statement late Friday noting that the Munich vicar-general who approved the priest's transfer had taken "full responsibility" for the decision, seeking to remove any question about the pontiff's potential responsibility as archbishop at the time.

Victims advocates weren't persuaded.

"We find it extraordinarily hard to believe that Ratzinger didn't reassign the predator, or know about the reassignment," said Barbara Blaine, president and founder of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

The pope, meanwhile, continues to be under fire for a 2001 Vatican letter he sent to all bishops advising them that all cases of sexual abuse of minors must be forwarded to his then-office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and that the cases were to be subject to pontifical secret.

Germany's justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, has cited the document as evidence that the Vatican created a "wall of silence" around abuse cases that prevented prosecution. Irish bishops have said the document had been "widely misunderstood" by the bishops themselves to mean they shouldn't go to police. And lawyers for abuse victims in the United States have cited the document in arguing that the Catholic Church tried to obstruct justice.

But canon lawyers insisted Friday that there was nothing in the document that would preclude bishops from fulfilling their moral and civic duties of going to police when confronted with a case of child abuse.

They stressed that the document merely concerned procedures for handling the church trial of an accused priest, and that the secrecy required by Rome for that hearing by no means extended to a ban on reporting such crimes to civil authorities.

"Canon law concerning grave crimes ... doesn't in any way interfere with or diminish the obligations of the faithful to civil laws," said Monsignor Davide Cito, a professor of canon law at Rome's Santa Croce University.

The letter doesn't tell bishops to also report the crimes to police.

But the Rev. John Coughlin, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School, said it didn't need to. A general principle of moral theology to which every bishop should adhere is that church officials are obliged to follow civil laws where they live, he said.

Yet Bishop John McAreavey of Dromore in Northern Ireland, told a news conference this week that Irish bishops "widely misinterpreted" the directive and couldn't get a clear reading from Rome on how to proceed.

"One of the difficulties that bishops expressed was the fact that at times it wasn't always possible to get clear guidance from the Holy See and there wasn't always a consistent approach within the different Vatican departments," he said.

"Obviously, Rome is aware of this misinterpretation and the harm that this has done, or could potentially do, to the trust that the people have in how the church deals with these matters," he said.

An Irish government-authorized investigation into the scandal and cover up harshly criticized the Vatican for its mixed messages and insistence on secrecy in the 2001 directive and previous Vatican documents on the topic.

"An obligation to secrecy/confidentialtiy on the part of participants in a canonical process could undoubtedly constitute an inhibition on reporting child sexual abuse to the civil authorities or others," it concluded.

In the United States, Dan Shea, an attorney for several victims, has introduced the Ratzinger letter in court as evidence that the church was trying to obstruct justice. He has argued that the church impeded civil reporting by keeping the cases secret and "reserving" them for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

"This is an international criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice," Shea told The Associated Press.

STORY LINK

Symphony of Science - The Poetry of Reality (An Anthem for Science)

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:39:36 PDT

The Poetry of Reality is the fifth installment in the Symphony of Science music video series. It features 12 scientists and science enthusiasts, including Michael Shermer,

Image via Wikipedia

Jacob Bronowski, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Jill Tarter, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Feynman, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Carolyn Porco, and PZ Myers, promoting science through words of wisdom.

Special thanks are due to The Sagan Appreciation Society:
http://www.youtube.com/user/SaganAppr...

and Connie Barlow:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ghostsofe...

for their huge help in finding source materials. Check out their Youtube pages! Thanks also to all of you who suggested footage that I have not mentioned, I really appreciate it.

Check out http://symphonyofscience.com for more science music videos!

And my other website for more original electronic music: http://www.colorpulsemusic.com

Lyrics:

[Michael Shermer]
Science is the best tool ever devised
For understanding how the world works

[Jacob Bronowski]
Science is a very human form of knowledge
We are always at the brink of the known

[Carl Sagan]
Science is a collaborative enterprise
Spanning the generations
We remember those who prepared the way
Seeing for them also

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
If you're scientifically literate,
The world looks very different to you
And that understanding empowers you

Refrain:
[Richard Dawkins]
There's real poetry in the real world
Science is the poetry of reality

[Sagan]
We can do science
And with it, we can improve our lives

[Jill Tarter]
The story of humans is the story of ideas
That shine light into dark corners

[Lawrence Krauss]
Scientists love mysteries
They love not knowing

[Richard Feynman]
I don't feel frightened by not knowing things
I think it's much more interesting

[Brian Greene]
There's a larger universal reality
of which we are all a part

[Stephen Hawking]
The further we probe into the universe
The more remarkable are the discoveries we make

[Carolyn Porco]
The quest for the truth, in and of itself,
Is a story that's filled with insights

(Refrain)

[Greene]
From our lonely point in the cosmos
We have through the power of thought
Been able to peer back to a brief moment
After the beginning of the universe

[PZ Myers]
I think that science changes the way your mind works
To think a little more deeply about things

[Dawkins]
Science replaces private predjudice
With publicly verifiable evidence

(Refrain)

mp3: http://symphonyofscience.com

Chief exorcist says Devil is in Vatican

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:45:06 PST

The Devil is lurking in the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican's chief exorcist claimed on Wednesday.

Image via Wikipedia

Father Gabriele Amorth said people who are possessed by Satan vomit shards of glass and pieces of iron.

He added that the assault on Pope Benedict XVI on Christmas Eve by a mentally unstable woman and the sex abuse scandals which have engulfed the Church in the US, Ireland, Germany and other countries, were proof that the Anti-Christ was waging a war against the Holy See.

"The Devil resides in the Vatican and you can see the consequences," said Father Amorth, 85, who has been the Holy See's chief exorcist for 25 years.

"He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, or even appear to be sympathetic. At times he makes fun of me. But I'm a man who is happy in his work."

While there was "resistance and mistrust" towards the concept of exorcism among some Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI has no such doubts, Father Amorth said. "His Holiness believes wholeheartedly in the practice of exorcism. He has encouraged and praised our work," he added.

The evil influence of Satan was evident in the highest ranks of the Catholic hierarchy, with "cardinals who do not believe in Jesus and bishops who are linked to the demon," Father Amorth said.

In a rare insight into the world of exorcism, the Italian priest told La Repubblica newspaper that the 1973 film The Exorcist gave a "substantially exact" impression of what it was like to be possessed by the Devil.

People possessed by evil sometimes had to be physically restrained by half a dozen people while they were exorcised. They would scream, utter blasphemies and spit out sharp objects, he said.

"From their mouths, anything can come out – pieces of iron as long as a finger, but also rose petals," said Father Amorth, who claims to have performed 70,000 exorcisms. "When the possessed dribble and slobber, and need cleaning up, I do that too. Seeing people vomit doesn't bother me. The exorcist has one principal duty - to free human beings from the fear of the Devil."

The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II by a Turkish gunman in 1981 and recent revelations of "violence and paedophilia" committed by Catholic priests against children in their care was also the work of the Devil, said Father Amorth, who has written a book about his vocation, Memoirs of an Exorcist, which was published recently.

Father Amorth, who is the president of the Association of Exorcists and fought as a partisan during the war, has previously claimed that both Hitler and Stalin were possessed by the Devil.

In an interview with Vatican Radio in 2006, he said: "Of course the Devil exists and he can not only possess a single person but also groups and entire populations.

"I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed. All you have to do is think about what Hitler and Stalin did."

He also condemned the Harry Potter books, saying they were dangerous because they dabbled in the occult and failed to draw a clear distinction between "the Satanic art" of black magic and benevolent white magic.

STORY LINK

Just another Jesus Camp kid

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:39:22 PDT

By Docaroo/Chris --

I would imagine that many others have had a similar experience with Christianity. Some of the testimonials I've read here moved and spoke to me deeply. The honesty and emotional level changes grabbed hold all of me.

Image by wayneandwax via Flickr

Has anyone seen the movie Jesus Camp? I lived that movie in many ways. Of course the movie fell short while stopping short of teenage years and showing the area of "sexual sin" and how to hate your own body etc... The camp leader lady fills some gaps nicely of how you can end up though.

I started this journey for truth around two years ago thinking it would lead me to a deeper understanding of god, which if I think about is sick in it's very own nature. As if I was so lost that I didn't understand how a talking snake, a burning bush, the brutal torture and murder of a man were beyond my grasp as the key/s to life. If I didn't like it though I could go straight to hell!

I wanted to believe things because I found them on my own and not because they were taught to me from the tender age of three. What has puzzled me somewhat and this may be an indicator to the level of mental abuse I suffered, was the fact that I did not rebel from the standpoint of this revelation. In other words, something was just not right.

I would be remiss by not stating that another catalyst planted the seed for change. I had a paradigm shift in another area of life that started to make me question and lust for truth. A truth that I only suspected may be out there.

"If I was so wrong about this, what about everything else?"

The first "everything else" was my faith/religion. After some brief education, logic and reason became the beginning of my self awareness. How deep was this rabbit hole within me?

Now when I say I was a Christian, I do mean a Jesus Camp child who watched rolling in the isles and speaking in tongues. I was even "slain in the spirit" in my adult years. The abuse of this "life of freedom" started to well up from that hole like a spring of poison within.

"Living water from which I would never thirst from again huh?" I always thought this was beautiful and poetic.The Christian faith is like a living virus that is a self serving poison infecting us with a life of masochism. I am so drawn to the movie "The Matrix" as a parallel to what was really going on within me. There was a prick inside me and something was wrong. Why would I get depressed for no reason, why did I feel so confused when I knew the living god? Why was I such a disgusting sinner for the lust in my heart when I had no physical control over it?

Friends I can tell you thankfully that even though you can't fully get rid of a virus you can treat it with the knowledge that science has given us. I should add to my virus analogy that medical advancements came to be in the face and opposition of faith. The disease can be treated to the point that it's almost forgotten due to it's remission after getting treatment. I say almost because you can't fully get rid of a virus as it lives on undetected. It may not be all bad to forget completely though.

I never want to lose my compassion for others and what they have gone through. (how is it that I now feel MORE love and compassion for my fellow humans?) I don't want to sound like I have lived a life of hell and torture. I have at times yes but I have achieved some great things. Joining the military I count as one of those great decisions which lead me around the world. The desire to become a special ops commando was a great dream in me and I lived that dream. Even then I was simultaneously carrying out conflicting archetypes in my very job description. One being a Navy corpsman (medical) and the other being a trained killer.

Having some success in business and becoming a father was worth leaving the service for. Taylor is the name of my 10-year-old little girl who I have been raising on my own since she was around 4.

Giving these maybe boring details in the hope to illustrate my human experiences and to show some portion of range within it. Religion poisoned so much of my life and the sky captain was always there to mix confusion, theft, and unpurify those experiences.

We do in point of fact live in a "Matrix" type of world where most people are plugged into a fantasy that is so real TO THEM. Encouragement should be realized from living on the side of Neo and Morpheus, the later also being a character in Ovid's Metamorphoses as the god of dreams. Dreams can be special in many forms but religous delusion is intellectually lazy at best. At it's worst you fill in the blanks.

There is a solution to this problem.

All you have to do to receive this beautiful free gift of healing is reach out and take it.

Scientific elegance is explained as something so simple a child can understand but underneath lies complex sophistication. (The Mac Computer comes to mind as an example)
How elegant to realize the cure for a disease is that it NEVER really existed in the first place?

"No Mr. Smith you don't have cancer as the doctor explains to you there is no such thing".... slowing awaking from the old dream of your life into the brand new dawn of your beautiful reality....

Minister Pleads Guilty To Child Solicitation

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:09:06 PST

Pastor Had Sex With Teen Church Member Multiple Times

FRANKLIN, Ind. -- A former central Indiana minister pleaded guilty Thursday to felony charges stemming from a sexual relationship he had with a 15-year-old church member.

Daniel Moore

Former New Whiteland Baptist Church pastor Daniel Moore, 50, pleaded guilty to felony child solicitation and sexual misconduct charges.

Court documents indicated that police began investigating Moore after the girl's parents suspected a sexual relationship.

The teen told investigators that between January and March 2009, she and Moore kissed or engaged in sex acts at least seven times.

"I believe a lot of it was uncovered by finding notes and text messages in the young girl's bedroom," Johnson County Prosecutor Brad Cooper said last year. "I think there was some resistance by the victim to start with to report this, but I believe the persistence of parents had the young girl making this report to the police."

Johnson County deputy prosecutor Doug Cummins said Moore will be sentenced to 10 years in prison if a judge accepts the plea agreement.

Under the agreement, Moore must register as a sex offender and seek treatment in prison. Sentencing is set for April 8.

Supreme Court to hear case involving Fred Phelps' protests at military funerals

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 05:10:14 PDT

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case involving Fred Phelps and his Topeka congregation, whose protests at military funerals have angered families across the country.

A member of Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church,
protests at the funeral service of a US Marine
killed in Iraq

The court said it would consider an appeal from the father of a slain Marine who hopes to reinstate a $5 million verdict against the Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church.

Albert Snyder of York, Pa., successfully sued the church in a Maryland federal court in 2007 arguing its funeral protest was an invasion of privacy that caused his family emotional distress.

But last fall an appeals court reversed the $5 million verdict, ruling the church’s protests were protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court will hear Snyder’s appeal this fall.

“It’s freedom of speech to some,” said Snyder, whose son Matthew was killed in Iraq. “To me it’s not what my son fought for. They’re kicking people in the face when they’re already down on the ground. All I was trying to do was bury my son.”

Westboro, an unaffiliated church with fewer than 100 members, went from local curiosity to national notoriety after it began protesting military funerals. Church members believe the deaths of military personnel — as well as tsunamis, Hurricane Katrina and the 2006 Amish school shooting — are God’s punishment for the tolerance of homosexuality.

It’s a theology summed up on their hand-painted protest signs: Thank God for 9/11; America is Doomed; and Thank God for Dead Troops.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, a church leader and daughter of Westboro founder Fred Phelps, said her sister Margie Phelps is likely to argue the church’s case before the Supreme Court. Shirley Phelps-Roper and Margie Phelps are licensed attorneys.

Phelps-Roper said it’s God’s will that the church gets to appear before the nation’s highest court. Regardless of the ruling, she said it’s a “win-win” for the publicity-hungry church.

“You know how hard we’ve worked to get in front of them?” she said. “We came to the kingdom for this hour.”

For constitutional law scholars, the case promises fireworks. Funeral protests pose unique legal questions, and the ruling could have implications for the many state laws passed to curb Westboro’s actions, said Richard Levy, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Kansas.

“This is a hot area of First Amendment law,” Levy said. “There are a lot of issues swirling around this type of case, and the court may feel it should step in and clarify the law.”

The case also may not fall along the court’s traditional fault lines, Levy predicted. “I don’t know what the conservative or liberal position is on a case like this,” he said.

Snyder said he had never heard of Westboro Baptist Church before it announced plans to protest his son’s funeral in Westminster, Md.

The day of the funeral, Snyder was forced to enter the church’s service entrance to avoid protesters. Not knowing what to expect from the Kansas congregation, local police set up a mobile command post and deployed a SWAT team, Snyder recalled.

Even though his mind was on his son, Snyder said he couldn’t ignore the protesters and their signs. One proclaimed that his son was “raised for the devil.”

“You don’t stand 30 feet from the entrance to a church with a sign depicting two men having anal intercourse,” Snyder said. “That wasn’t freedom of speech; it was harassment.”

Phelps-Roper, however, isn’t remorseful. Her church has protested similar funerals across the country for years.

Just last week, she was in Washington picketing a memorial service for the late U.S. Rep. John Murtha and protesting in front of the Supreme Court.

Westboro’s adherents argue that the First Amendment is designed to protect speech the majority may not want to hear. But Phelps-Roper is ambivalent, noting that man’s law won’t matter much when America meets divine wrath.

“Her destruction is imminent,” she said. Laughing, she added: “And it’s going to be marvelous.”

Read more: Supreme Court to hear case involving Fred Phelps' protests at military funerals

Ya Know What I Mean?

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 05:41:35 PDT

By Carl S. --

Have you noticed how much the phrase “you know” is being used these days? Even political commentators on TV and government reps are reverting to it. I especially notice this, because I’m hearing-impaired and have to resort to close-captioning.

It gets to the point where almost every third word is interrupted by “you know.” A lot of the time, the sentences with it are jumbled and incomplete. As a whole, in our nation, it appears being coherent isn’t valued.

Back in my 7th grade class, I remember well the response a student got when he said, ”Well, you know.” The teacher said, “No, I DON’T know. You tell me.”

Pressed for answers, Christians frequently resort to “you know” when they’re unable to explain coherently just what they mean. The believer, when asked for details, is vague or generalizes, changes the subject, sometimes insults the inquirer, or walks away. How frustrating we’ve all been in dealing with them! My personal experiences with them have led me to see their reactions as similar to those of children who cover their ears and shout over and over, “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you.”

The history of this attitude of believers has at times been monumentally cruel, as when viewpoints other than their own have been met not with silence, but silencing, public reviling, even execution. It’s no wonder that, in a free-speech society, they regard atheists, with their insistence on other views, as being pushy, even dangerous to society, for it’s all they can legally do today.

Some time ago, when I was working up a way to tell my wife that I wouldn’t go to church services anymore, I once said, “I’m tired of people telling themselves things.” It isn’t just that they do it, it’s that they keep repeating the same things, like children do by rote.

Now, we’re supposed to respect their right to form their own beliefs, right? And yet, with regard to faith, reason is often treated as if it is not entitled to respect and feelings are given primacy over logic. This is hardly grownup. Believing what you’re TOLD to believe is not being an adult. Shouting insults and damnation at anyone who challenges you to explain the contradictions he finds in your beliefs is childish and bullying.

Speaking of experiences, I asked my wife’s former pastor if a good, non-Christian person would get into heaven. His immediate answer was, “Of course.” Recently, I asked her present pastor, and, after some evasion on his part, he finally answered that if I didn’t accept Jesus, I would go to hell (they both knew me pretty well). When I brought this discrepancy to my wife’s attention, her response was, “That’s his (the second one’s) opinion.” So, I ask this question, based on her statement, aren’t all these dogmas nothing more than differences of opinion, with no basis in fact? It’s not too different from the times when they argued about how many angels fit on the head of a pin, or whether a woman has a soul. Their claims have always been, to use the legal term, “specious” and without proof, so why don’t they just play around with that junk, and leave the serious social issues to secular society?

Parents sentenced to 16 months of prison for their son’s faith-healing death

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:32:55 PST

OREGON CITY — Clackamas County Circuit Court Judge Steven Maurer sentenced Jeffrey and Marci Beagley to 16 months in prison this afternoon, calling the couple’s decision to not seek medical care for their 16-year-old son, Neil Beagley, a “crime that was a product of an unwillingness to respect the boundaries of freedom of religious expression.”

Jeffrey and Marci Beagley are handcuffed
and taken into custody Monday after being
sentenced to 16 months in prison in the
faith-healing death of their son.

Marci Beagley sobbed as the sentencing was read, and shortly after, defense attorney Wayne Mackeson objected to the prison time. The sentence also includes three years of post-prison supervision.

Jeffrey and Marci Beagley were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide after a two-week trial that focused on the death of 16-year-old Neil Beagley, who died in June 2008 of complications involved with a urinary tract obstruction.

“The idea of sending Jeffrey and Marci Beagley to prison is heart-wrenching,” Maurer said in a lengthy explanation of his sentence. “I think, certainly, that I’m in complete agreement with the jurors who observed that the Beagleys are good people.”

But the decision was necessary, he said. “The magnitude of their crimes simply warrants it.”

Maurer touched upon religious freedoms, saying he thought the community was very respectful to beliefs from congregations like the Followers of Christ Church, which believes in faith-healing at the exclusion of most medical care.

But there are boundaries for religious freedom, he said.

“It is up to us as a community and a criminal justice system, and government, to take very seriously that societal obligation … and recognize that investment and interest we have in each and every child,” he said.

Too many children had died unnecessarily because of the church’s beliefs, Maurer said: “It needs to stop.”

The sentence could be a “pause for reflection” or re-examination for the Followers of Christ church, said Maurer, who added that he believed the church was capable of “softening the rigidity” of their beliefs on excluding medical care.

[...]

The Beagleys and Worthingtons are members of the Followers of Christ Church. Members of the Oregon City church have a lengthy history of child deaths from lack of medical care that influenced a 1999 law eliminating the religious freedom defense in cases involving the welfare of a child.

Maurer repeated something he stated during the Worthington sentencing, which was also echoed by defense attorneys during the Beagley trial: the case was not a referendum on the church.

But ignoring the church’s impact on the couple would be self-deluding, he said. “The church is imprinted upon them,” he said. [...more...]

- Source / Full Story: Jeffrey and Marci Beagley sentenced to 16 months of prison for their son’s faith-healing death, Nicole Dungca, The Oregonian, Mar. 8, 2010

Judge says sentence was necessary as deterrent to other church members

Maurer made it clear that the sentence was a direct attempt to deter other members of the Oregon City-based Followers of Christ Church from relying on faith healing to the exclusion of medical care.

“The fact of the matter is that Jeffrey and Marci Beagley are in large measure a product of the church,” he said. “The church has imprinted on them their beliefs, their attitudes, their concepts of their responsibilities in a matter that permeates this case. Decisions that were made and were not made by Jeff and Marci Beagley really are the core result of their adherence and their devotion to their church. So there really is no meaningful way to escape it, and we’re deluding ourselves if we pretend otherwise.”

He said other formal and informal attempts to work with the church to get them to recognize serious conditions and seek medical treatment had failed, as evidenced by the deaths of Neil and his niece, Ava Worthington.

“If one member of the Followers of Christ Church, on young couple find their child in distress and, being called upon by other members of the church to lay on hands, to just pray harder, if just one young couple says, ‘you know, I think this is the kind of situation we need to call for help’ … if just one child survives, this (sentence) is worth it,” he said. [...more...]

- Source / Full Story: Faith-healing parents sentenced to 16 months in prison, Matthew Graham, The Clackamas Review, Mar. 8, 2010

Religion Makes Me Feel Sick

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:53:24 PDT

By Ryan --

I'm not religious at all. I've never been religious. However, I've tried to understand what drives a person to follow a religion. I've attended religion courses in high school and university, and read up on my own on various religious beliefs.

Image by Jeff the Trojan via Flickr

I don't want to argue the merits of each religion because it's pointless. No one can win an argument about which religion is the most valid. Instead, the purpose of this rant is to vent about religion actually making me sick.

I'm an Atheist, and I am likely going to be an Atheist the rest of my life. I try to educate myself on other religions to be respectful of other peoples beliefs; however, I myself can't fathom any type of omnipotent being existing. My mind just won't accept that type of thinking.

Over the past few years I find myself getting more frustrated with religion. I find religious people can't keep their beliefs to themselves as if they feel the need to have their beliefs validated. Is this why religions such as Christianity are constantly trying to convert and "save" people?

Also, I find it very frustrating to see public dollars spent by governments to fund religion. It's disheartening to see money go towards capital projects (i.e. grants to build churches), military spending (i.e. fighting religion inspired wars), and special interest groups (i.e. giving money to Youth For Christ so they can convert more youth to Christianity).

As someone who is suffering from clinical depression, I find it difficult some days to get out of bed. The usual culprit that keeps me in bed is thinking about how predominant religion is in the world. The idea that the majority of people believe in an imaginary man that lives in the sky makes me feel an overwhelming sadness. This sadness is like a pit of lethargy I can't get out of. When I sink into my pit of depression I get severe migraines, feel dizzy, and have no drive.

Not only does religion bug me while I lay in bed; I can be watching TV when the thought of religion creeps into my mind. My face turns red, I feel extremely warm, begin to sweat, and have trouble breathing. The simple thought of religion quite often gives me panic attacks.

I've taken Celexa, Effexor, Paxil, and Pristiq. Also, I've seen 6 different Psychologists and Psychiatrists. I have yet to solve my problem stemming from my thoughts on religion.

Why did I write this little rant? I'm not completely sure. I think I was hoping it would be therapeutic. Also, if there is someone else out there going through what I am, I hope they learn they are not the only one.

Breathing and Forgiveness

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:39:46 PDT

By Heather --

Just something I've noticed- perhaps I should mention though: I've actually posted up here AGES ago but kind of disappeared for a long time. Some things have changed, some things haven't but telling you everything that has has happened isn't why I'm here. But I've been wondering about one particular aspect of my life and wondered if anyone else here felt the same way.

Image by loswl via Flickr

When I first broke away, I was relieved as well as a little scared- the relief came from no longer living in fear of hell, nor in fear that people I both knew and didn't know would burn forever was however the best part. The idea terrified me as a Christian and I felt like a failure because I was an introvert who failed to be a prophet outside the Internet- otherwise known as the sanctuary of trolls at times. Thankfully those days are gone. If you happen to stumble across some 7 year old ramblings of a deluded teenager, I apologise in advance. Heh.

I still am to a certain extent an introvert, though I'm better than I was in some respects (though a part of me suspects I shall always be better at expressing myself in writing than speaking, and as you can probably tell from this short piece- even that is not very good!) ;)

But something has happened to me, something for the better perhaps, something I've realised since I left Christianity almost three years ago this month.

I now find it easier to forgive then I ever did as a Christian.

Sometimes my temper does flare, and I suppose in my weaker moments I will let it get the better of me in terms of the topic of religion at some point, and it almost has at certain points in the past...

However. I feel... better now than how I was as a Christian in this area. I find it easier to forgive past misjudgments. I used to FORCE myself to forgive because of the threat of hell, and then perhaps would secretly still stew over the issue, it never getting resolved in reality.

But now... I can. I just take a breath and take my time. Without the threat of hell I can do this more. I actually DO forgive more often and in an honest manner which is true to myself and others, and find I can do so more easily without the metaphorical gun to my head- because I can think straight without panicking at the thought of the bullet embedding itself inside my skull. I don't have to fear that if I die without forgiving someone immediately I'll go to hell. Also, the idea of THEM going to hell is no longer an issue, so I can look at the entire thing more rationally.

And 'miraculously' (for lack of a better term), it's become easier to forgive the silly things, and sometimes even some of the slightly bigger things too. I am no 'saint' (snerk) and I recognise my own failings- and I know other people have them too.

When I take the time, I realise that this is probably the only life we have, and it is not the place for petty squabbles- sometimes tact is needed too, but sometimes it's okay to be forceful, to air out things, to say to someone you don't feel the same way, and when something is wrong. Sometimes that's just more healthy. Then if possible, we can get back to the issue if necessary and be calm. It all depends really at the end of the day upon the issue at hand.

This is a great site, and it helps people to air out grievances they shouldn't keep bottled up- but in real life they may feel forced to, and sometimes it IS just easier to do so in writing then speaking out- and I'm guessing I'm not the only one.

I now look at Christians, even the most putrid forms, often with pity now when they attack me verbally. Or me personally at least (when it comes to other people or groups of people, my blood will boil, and I somehow doubt that will change, though it has to be said, even then I feel pity for them in a slightly different way). I understand that they're probably just afraid though- like an animal in the corner lashing out. Who hasn't at some point been like that? It's okay for me to be at least a little defensive in response to such people (which I sometimes am), but I shouldn't ALWAYS return to my basest animal instincts and remember it IS a wonderful thing to be human- to be aware of our place in the universe, as finite as it is, and that we have precious little time to waste. It's what gives our life meaning. An eternal life removes all meaning and means we have no reason to do anything of real value.

As for people who simply hurt others for the sake of hurting, they are not worth my time unless it is to defend those who need it. Though I will do my best not to lower myself to their basest argumentative level. After all, just because the Internet is filled with trolls doesn't mean we should always feed them. Over time, they may grow up or perhaps not. Time will tell. They just need to take a deep breath of their own and really look at themselves as scary as the idea sometimes is. Perhaps they'll be surprised at what they find. Perhaps they'll find that really it's OKAY to be afraid sometimes, but the point of bravery is not to attack and lash out, but to face those fears, evaluate them and do the right thing regardless. That is bravery.

Sometimes forgiveness is still hard of course. Sometimes it's not ALWAYS the answer, or not the immediate course of action at the very least. Sometimes forgiveness is not my choice to make- if the misdeed is against someone else for instance. There's still work to do before you can get to that point if at all a lot of the time.

For some people here it's still hard to forgive- and that's OKAY. Of course people have every right to feel angry, and we shouldn't apologise for our feelings. This site for many is like therapy, and when I first broke away, it was there for me in some respects, simply by reading the posts. Many here are not ready to forgive yet, some perhaps feel they never can, because hey we all have had different experiences here after all and we've all had out own heartaches. This is fine to say too. That is honesty. And we must at the very least at first be honest with ourselves if we can hope to get anywhere in life. Some people need more time. Some people need more than just time. We're all different after all.

But for some reason, since I've left and the feeling of betrayal has decreased, and as I've grown a little more contemplative, I now find forgiveness in general a lot easier now than I ever did as a Christian.

Perhaps because now I feel like I actually have a choice in the matter.

Richard Dawkins Interviewed on SBS Dateline

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 05:26:59 PDT

You could call him lots of things - an evolutionary biologist, the world's most militant atheist, a pot-stirring, ignorant bigot, or favourite, "Darwin's Rottweiler". Professor Richard Dawkins has written any number of books fanning heated debate between believers of any faith and non-believers like himself. His best-seller 'The God Delusion' caused a real stir and he's at again in his latest effort, 'The Greatest Show on Earth', his boots-and-all scientific argument for evolution and against creationism. In Australia for an atheist conference, George Negus caught up with Richard Dawkins in, of all places, his quite God-fearing home town of Brisbane.

GEORGE NEGUS: One of the most interesting descriptions I've heard of you, from an Australian actually, that might even bring a smile to the faces of your critics - of which there are only several million I suspect, right - this guy said that, "Richard Dawkins is the most popular God-basher since they stopped feeding Christians to the lions." It got a smirk from me, but is that true? I mean, is that what you're doing? Is it God-bashing?

RICHARD DAWKINS, EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST: I have nothing to do with lions. I am gentle and

GEORGE NEGUS: But God you give a few swipes to.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, verbal swipes. I mean, when you when you think about what the other side does, um, you know, nobody like me ever goes around flying planes into buildings or making suicide bombs or something.

GEORGE NEGUS: In the name of God.

RICHARD DAWKINS: In the name of God. We just use our language, use our voices, use our pens.

GEORGE NEGUS: Is there a danger that you could become an extremist yourself?

RICHARD DAWKINS: Do I sound extreme?

GEORGE NEGUS: Not on the face of it, but you are questioning, in the case of many Christians, many Jews, many Muslims, many Hindus, members of the Brotherhood of Left-Handed Electricians - whatever faith it is - you're questioning the very basis of their existence by questioning the existence of God as their creator.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, then, that may be, but to use a current phrase, they should get a life. I mean, we have this one life, let's enjoy it, let's live it to the full and don't get so worked up about don't identify yourself so passionately with this business called religion.

GEORGE NEGUS: Have you ever, ever had any doubts that your position, as an evolutionary biologist, or whatever way we decide to describe you, or a God-basher, have you ever had any doubt that they might be right and you might be wrong?

RICHARD DAWKINS: I have no doubt at all that I will be proved wrong in certain respects, and the scientific world view that I hold will be enhanced and embellished and elaborated in all sorts of very exciting ways in the next few hundred years. So, I'm going to be wrong about that, certainly in detail. As for being wrong about some particular religion, like Christianity or Islam, no, I have no doubts about that at all. There may be something, and I think there will be something, much grander than anybody's existing world view, but I'm damn sure it's not going to be Christianity or Judaism or Islam or anything else that has its roots in

GEORGE NEGUS: They won't be pleased to hear that. Very interested to hear what you think - and I know you touch on it publicly - in the fact that, over last few years, when there has been a natural disaster or a geological disaster or a human disaster, there are certain types of believers, faith believers, particularly Christians, who will immediately suggest that these disasters are God's way of punishing people for various sins. If we can take the latest couple of disasters, for instance, Haiti and Chile, your friend Pat Robertson, the American evangelist, straight away said that the Haitians almost deserved that earthquake because they were devil-worshippers some centuries ago.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, I mean, I think it's a disgusting thing to say and I think most decent Christians would agree with me about that. It is true that Christianity is obsessed with sin and is obsessed with reparation for sin. Jesus himself was supposed to have come to Earth in order to atone for people's sins, so there is an unhealthy preoccupation with sin in Christianity, and you could say that Pat Robertson has just taken it to an extreme.

GEORGE NEGUS: What might he come up with where Chile is concerned? They have not been good enough Catholics or...?

RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, somebody of Pat Robertson's type wouldn't like Catholics anyway, so, maybe

GEORGE NEGUS: True. The latest thing I thought I would throw at you, because we are a program that deals with contemporary issues, is this whole Mossad situation where you have, people who are, I imagine, of the Jewish religious faith, who are secretly killing people in the name of God.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Why would you think I would think I mean, you should be asking a religious person whether they find that strange. I find it not at all strange because I find that religion really does motivate people to do horrible things because they have this passionate faith in whatever their religion happens to be, and it teaches them that the other religion is the wrong one.

GEORGE NEGUS: You have your own secular humanitarian foundation, right? Non-believers giving aid.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, that's a small enterprise that we set up in the wake of the

Haiti

disaster in order to try and raise money. We actually raised $500,000 for

GEORGE NEGUS: So, atheists can do good work?

RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, yes. That shouldn't surprise anybody.

GEORGE NEGUS: But it does. I mean, an atheist NGO is what we're talking about, isn't it?

RICHARD DAWKINS: Yes, and, once again, people who are surprised by that have believed their own propaganda.

GEORGE NEGUS: We've always said that politics and religion shouldn't mix. At the moment, if you ask me, as a political journalist, throughout the Western world at least, they are inseparable. I mean, politicians run around wearing their religion on their sleeve.

RICHARD DAWKINS: They do in America. Do they really in Australia as well?

GEORGE NEGUS: Interestingly enough, we have a practising Protestant Prime Minister. We have a practising Catholic Leader of the Opposition. I sometimes wonder when they both sit down to pray to God for election victory, where does that leave God?

RICHARD DAWKINS: They may be religious, but that doesn't mean they wear it on their sleeve. I mean, Tony Blair is religious, but he didn't wear it on his sleeve while he was Prime Minister. He does now.

GEORGE NEGUS: What do you think would happen, though, if a candidate in the next upcoming British election, or in America, was to say, "I'm an atheist and I am running for prime minister or president." What do you think the reaction would be?

RICHARD DAWKINS: In America, he wouldn't get elected. In Britain, I don't think it would make that much difference, one way or the other.

GEORGE NEGUS: Did you get any hope, as an atheist, or as a non-believer, by what Barack Obama said, when he said that country was a mix of people, of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and non-believers.

RICHARD DAWKINS: And non-believers. That was a very, very satisfying moment. It was a big moment in the history of modern American politics.

GEORGE NEGUS: Going back to something I said earlier - it wasn't meant to be a totally facetious question - I wonder whether religious politicians ask themselves whose side God is on. After September 11, when George Bush gave the State of the Union address, at the end of that he concluded it, like all American presidents do, with the words "May God continue to protect America". At the same time he was doing that, there were millions of Muslims all over the world asking God to protect them from him.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Yes. Horrible. I mean, you know, you keep putting to me things that are playing into my hands that I don't need to say anything because these are all points you should be putting to religious people, and they should hang their heads in shame.

GEORGE NEGUS: Do you feel outnumbered though? Do you think that you're a voice in the wilderness still, or are people saying, "This guy is onto something?"

RICHARD DAWKINS: If you take Even in the United States, which is the most religious country in the Western world, if you list the various religious denominations - if you take Christians altogether then, of course, they outnumber everybody else, but if you take them separately - Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians, and so on, then secular, non-religious people I think come second in that list. They are not a insignificant minority.

GEORGE NEGUS: There a couple of quotes I found about you I'd like to get your reaction to. "He's giving atheists a bad name. Atheists are becoming as annoying as the believers used to be." Does that mean they you are actually creating your own demon here?

RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, no, that's a very common thing that's said by atheists who think that we should shut up, that we should be quiet. It often goes with the statement that people like me ought to have a degree in theology before being allowed to criticise religion, that kind of thing, which, of course

GEORGE NEGUS: You have studied the faiths that you criticise.

RICHARD DAWKINS: I have not studied theology in great detail, nor should I, because the premise of theology is that there is a God who exists, and if I am rejecting that for very good reasons then there is no point in becoming learned in theology. You might as well say you have got to be learned in 'leprechaun-ology' before you dismiss leprechauns!

GEORGE NEGUS: Can you go on doing this? You have such a strong antagonism towards other people who have faith and religion, that you're going to keep battering away until your head gets sore.

RICHARD DAWKINS: I am passionate about truth and passionate about clarity, and I don't regard myself as particularly militant or aggressive. I simply wish to discuss what is true and to listen to evidence and put evidence forward to other people and have a sensible, sane, moderated argument.

GEORGE NEGUS: Good talking to you. We could go on for a long time.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Thank you very much.

GEORGE NEGUS: Richard Dawkins. And if that doesn't spark some pretty fiery dinner party carry-on, I don't know what will!

RELATED STORY AND VIDEO: Dawkins celebrates the miracle of life – with or without God

There but for the grace of God...

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:19:13 PDT

By summerbreeze --

A very nice man in our town has a form of 'Elephant Man' disease. Half of his face is normal (I hate to use the word 'normal') and the other half is a red color with huge bulbous lumps from his forehead to his neck. The eye on that side is pulled downward to the point where I don't believe he can see out of it. Also the arm on that side is small and deformed, and he walks with a limp.

I see this man occasionally in stores and on the street, and he always has a big smile on the one side of his face, and even though I don't know him personally, the people who do say that he's one of the nicest, kindest people you could ever know. His name is Henry.

Last weekend my husband and I stood in a line within a busy restaurant waiting for a table. Who should come up and stand behind us? Two widows that I remembered from the megachurch that I used to belong to. They didn't recognize me, but I sure did them. They were two of the nosiest, opinionated, judgmental, Jeebus-loving old bats you'd care never to run across. (It's surprising they aren't all hunched over, wearing those 3-pound iron crosses around their necks.)

Anyway, while we were waiting, Henry walked by us on his way out the door. I could hear fluttering from behind me, and one of them said, "There but for the grace of God go I," while the other one agreed wholeheartedly. Now, I abhor violence, refusing to watch it on TV or at the movies, but in an instant I felt like turning around and popping them both -- it would have felt sooo good! I was forced to control myself because my husband has heart issues, and confrontations of any kind upset him.

When I was young and I would hear that statement, I assumed that it was from the Bible. It's actually a remark made by John Bradford (circa 1510-1555). However, Christians ever since have adopted it as a Christian truism with which they heartily agree.

Think about it, what this statement really means. To self-involved Christians with tunnel vision, it says "I have received God's Grace; God loves me more than that poor person, obviously."

God's fickle "mercy", and it's O.K. with them!

It saddens my heart when I think of all of the people down through the ages with deformities who were shunned (and worse) by believers because of the stupid belief that because God didn't intervene, then the deformed person MUST have deserved it. This also applies to the mental illnesses. It was seen in the past that the mentally ill suffered from demons, and peoples skulls were drilled with holes so as to let "the demons out." Again, it was seen that God's lack of intervention was proof that "something was 'wrong' with that person."

Man's inhumanity to Man, all courtesy of the all-knowing and all-loving God!

Does "There but for the grace of God go I" offend you? I'd like to hear your views on that statement. Thanks!

Boulder pastor, two others suspected in investment scheme

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:39:05 PST

A former associate pastor at Boulder's City on the Hill Church and two other men have been arrested on suspicion of bilking about $750,000 from local investors who were told they were putting their money in international bank notes in countries like Switzerland.

Loren Ankarlo

Former pastor Loren Ankarlo and Kevin Lauritsen were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of three counts of theft, three counts of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and violation of the Colorado Organized Crime Act. Douglas Wertzbaugher was arrested Wednesday at his Broomfield home on suspicion of two counts of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

Ankarlo was being held at the Denver County Jail on a misdemeanor offense when he was arrested on the Boulder County warrant. Lauritsen was arrested in Fort Worth, Texas, and all three men will be transported to Boulder County to face the new charges.

Officials with City of Hill Church could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The men are accused of convincing at least three men -- who said they trusted Ankarlo because of his role at the Boulder church -- to put hundreds of thousands of dollars toward a unique investment opportunity. According to investigators, the suspects failed to return the investors' money and are suspected of spending it to pay themselves and earlier investors.

One investor, who submitted a complaint to the Boulder County District Attorney's Office, said he knew Ankarlo and Wertzbaugher because Ankarlo was an associate pastor at City on the Hill and Wertzbaugher was married to the pastor's sister, according to an arrest warrant.

Ankarlo told the man that he was a senior vice president of One Source Funding Group, which gave investors an opportunity to participate in a program that generated a high rate of return. The investors said they were told that their money would only go into the investment "platforms" and they all learned later that it was used to pay off previous debts and One Source employees, according to the warrant.

One investor, Ed Mazur, told investigators that he was hesitant to put "all the money (he) had" into a platform and that Wertzbaugher became frustrated with his reluctance and eventually told him to "fish or cut bait, they all had bills to pay," according to the warrant.

"Ed thought the comment was strange because Wertzbaugher was not to be paid with up front commissions resulting from Ed's investment," the warrant said.

Mazur eventually decided to invest because he had watched the value of his annuity drop from $310,000 to $200,000 and wanted to preserve what he had left, the warrant said.

"Ankarlo explained that they (Ankarlo and Wertzbaugher) were not doing anything with the money other than facilitating the transfer to the banks," according to the warrant. "The banks would be investing in churches, orphanages, nursing homes, roads and dams in developing countries."

Mazur said he was still hesitant to invest and "Ankarlo prayed with Ed so that Ed would have 'the strength to do the right thing,'" according to the warrant. After investing and failing to receive his principal or any return on his money, Mazur e-mailed Lauritsen, who told him "Ankarlo was an alcoholic and was making promises unknown to Lauritsen," the warrant said.

When investigators contacted Ankarlo, he told them that he has no training in banking or finance and was asked by Lauritsen to help with One Source Funding. Ankarlo considered himself an "intern" to Lauritsen's investment expertise and told investigators that he involved the alleged victims because he knew they "had experienced hardships in their lives and Ankarlo wanted to help them," the warrant said.

"Ankarlo did not recall the details of the sales presentations ... because he was on medications that affected his memory at the time," the warrant said.

Lauritsen told investigators that Ankarlo was president of One Source and that Lauritsen didn't know what was presented to prospective investors.

"The philanthropic platforms were presented by Ankarlo and were not his (Lauritsen's) idea," according to the warrant.

STORY LINK

Read more: Former Boulder pastor, two others suspected in investment scheme - Boulder Daily Camera http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_14515700#ixzz0hSPiFEni

Pastor arrested in prostitution sting

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:27:12 PST

MOBILE, Ala. - The Mobile Police Department's Narcotics and Vice Unit has arrested 22 people in connection with an Escort Service Operation in west Mobile. One of those arrested is a local pastor.

William Curtin

William Curtin was among the suspects booked into the Metro Jail Tuesday on a charge of Patronizing a Prostitute. Curtin is a pastor at St. John United Methodist Church in Semmes, Ala. and also a former member of the Mobile Planning Commission. He's also spent time at two other local churches, and resigned from the Mobile Planning Commission earlier this week.

From March 1, to March 5, officers conducted an Escort Service Operation in response to citizen complaints and gathered intelligence.

The five day operation concluded on March 5, and resulted in 22 arrests including two felony and 24 misdemeanor charges.

STORY LINK

He Who Casts the First Stone

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:30:17 PST

Recommended by swabby429 --

A little over a year ago, Amarillo’s swingers geared up for their New Year’s Eve party at Route 66 Party and Event Rental, a downtown business owned by a prominent couple, Mac and Monica Mead. Few in this conservative,

church-heavy city knew about the weekend parties, and the swingers liked it that way. “Everybody in the lifestyle has to be very, very discreet,” says Mac, a leather-skinned truck driver with a shaved head, piercing blue eyes and an earring.

The Meads enforced strict rules at the members-only club: no drugs, no single men, no audio-visual equipment. Most couples, even ones who had been in “the lifestyle” for years, are on a first-name basis only. The location of the club is (or was) “to be kept strictly private.” So imagine the swingers’ surprise when they arrived at their New Year’s Eve bash to find two dozen protesters, local media in tow, holding signs and singing songs. This was a most unwelcome coming-out party.

Some protesters, mostly young men in their teens and early 20s, wore black hoodies and military fatigues. The men, Amarillo would soon learn, were foot soldiers of Repent Amarillo, a new, militant evangelical group that advertises itself as “the Special Forces of spiritual warfare.” Their leader, David Grisham, a security guard at nuclear-bomb facility Pantex who moonlights as a pastor, explained the action. “We’re here to shine the light on this darkness,” Grisham told the Amarillo Globe-News. “I don’t think Amarillo knew about this place. This is adultery. This is wrong. There’s no telling how many venereal diseases get spread, how many abortions.” The goal, Grisham says, was not just to save the swingers’ souls, but to shut the club down.

It’s hard for the swingers to drum up powerful allies in Amarillo, where real men worship Jesus at one of the biggest cowboy churches in the world and conservative politics run deeper than the Ogallala Aquifer. Citizens of Amarillo will tell you, with a certain pride, that their city is the biggest little town in Texas. For all the open space, it can seem like the walls are closing in.

For the past year, this Bible Belt city of 200,000 has been consumed by a culture clash between Repent Amarillo and their targets, a list that includes everything from gay bars to liberal churches. For the Route 66 swingers, Grisham’s “special forces” have been a near-constant presence. Jobs have been lost, families estranged, assault charges filed and businesses shuttered. So far, no public official has stood up to defend these businesses, which operate legally. To the contrary, Repent Amarillo has managed to turn the city’s own laws and employees into an effective weapon. Amarillo, it turns out, doesn’t have the stomach to stick up for gays, swingers, strippers or even Unitarians. Absent a peacekeeper, the conflict might end up being settled the old-fashioned way, frontier-style. “This will not end until somebody gets hurt, either us or them,” one swinger warns.

On a crisp winter night, Mac and Monica Mead lounge at the Route 66 club and recount the strangest year of their lives. The club consists mainly of one room, a clean space with a tiny dance floor and some chairs and tables. Off to one side is a hallway that holds three “playrooms,” each tackily decorated according to a different theme: Oriental, Egyptian (featuring a wall hanging Mac’s son brought back from a tour in Iraq), and jungle. There is an eyebolt in the ceiling of the Egyptian room. Mac says it’s for one of the more popular attractions, a sex swing. Mac chokes up a bit explaining how the place has been a “home away from home” for many. The swingers are a decidedly working-class bunch: truckers, cabbies, schoolteachers and tow-truck drivers—hard-working couples, mostly married, who, for reasons known only to their libidos, enjoy having sex with each other’s partners. They’re mostly middle-aged and aren’t going to win any beauty pageants.
A large-screen TV, which the Meads occasionally glance at, displays the surveillance camera on the parking lot adjacent to the building. The lot, owned by the mayor’s husband, has been the staging area for most Repent protests. It’s also used by Route 66 patrons. Since the owner hasn’t objected, Repent members can use the space, which puts them in direct contact with swingers and their vehicles.

Repent has been at every swinger get-together in the last year—32 times, according to Monica’s tally.
After the New Year’s party, Repent tried to get authorities to shutter the club, first suggesting to local law enforcement that the Meads were running an illegal brothel. When the cops showed no interest (on-premises sex clubs are legal in Texas), the group filed complaints with the fire marshal and the city’s code-enforcement division. As in many cities, Amarillo code enforcement is primarily complaint-driven. While it makes a certain amount of sense to focus on violations being noticed by the public, this case shows how easily the system can be manipulated. The city did find some minor violations, like the lack of separate-sex bathrooms. The club was shut down for five months while the Meads sank $20,000 into bringing the building up to code.

In June, when the building reopened, Repent Amarillo became an almost-constant presence, shouting through bullhorns, blasting Christian music, haranguing club members, following swingers in vehicles and sticking video cameras into people’s faces. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has been called out twice. Police records show that nearby businesses have called frequently with noise complaints. Repent even showed up on occasion when the Route 66 building was rented out for non-swinger events. “They have been here every time we open our doors, regardless of what kind of functions we have, whether I’m down here doing maintenance, cleaning, whatever,” Mac says. “They don’t have a life. Well, I guess we are their lives. We’re their blood. At three or four in the morning, we’ll open the door, and there they are. They come waddling out of their vehicles with their cameras.”

At first, the swinger community was mystified by the attention. On the 60-some hours of surveillance footage the Meads have, a swinger can be heard telling a Repent member that the swingers haven’t done anything to bother them.“You’re going to hell, and it bothers me,” Grisham responds. “What bothers me is you’re going to hell.”

Perhaps the most insidious tactic Repent uses is trying to destroy the reputation of the swingers. In Amarillo, people can be ostracized over a whiff of impropriety. On one tape, Grisham directs followers to get the license-plate numbers in the Route 66 parking lot. “A new couple can be here three or four hours,” says Mac. “Whenever they leave, the Repent Amarillo group will call them by first and last name, know where they live, know where they work, just within a very few hours.”

Randall Sammons says he was fired from his job of 13 years in August after his boss learned Sammons was a swinger from another employee, a Repent member. He believes he’s now as good as blacklisted in Amarillo. “I’m screwed at finding a job,” Sammons says. Russell Grisham, David’s 20-year-old son who has a conviction on his record for hacking the computer system at his high school, has posted the names, photos and workplaces of swingers on the Internet, including one man whose wife works for a school district. (“Family-wise, it will kill both of us,” the man says.) In at least two instances, Repent members called swingers’ employers. Mac, meanwhile, is still far from the come-to-Jesus moment Grisham wants. “This group claims to be Christian,” Mac says. “Sir, I am a Christian. I believe in the God almighty, but I do not treat people the way they treat us or others.”
In December, the Meads tried to get an Amarillo justice of the peace to issue a “peace bond,” which would have required Russell Grisham to forfeit money posted with the court if he continued threatening behavior. The judge, Debbie Horn, said at the end of a three-and-a-half hour hearing that she didn’t have enough evidence to issue the bond. While the authorities’ hands-off attitude is mystifying to some in Amarillo, Norris, the city attorney, says the city’s inaction is easily explained: Nobody’s done anything illegal. “Both camps have pressed my office to use the power of government to shut down the other one,” he says. “The swingers want me to shut down [Repent]. Repent wants me to shut down the swingers.” He adds, “The First Amendment is alive and well in Amarillo, and Amarillo is strong enough to allow everyone to have free speech.”

It’s debatable whether all of Repent’s actions are legal. In January, six Repent members showed up at a weekend swingers party at the private home of Cristal Robinson, Route 66’s attorney. During the party, Robinson says the group trespassed on her property and tried to block cars from entering the driveway. She called the police. Sheriff’s deputies showed up, followed not long after by a state trooper.

The two law-enforcement groups apparently had different ideas about how to handle Repent, according to a Potter County incident report. The state trooper took photographs of the Repent vehicles and filled out suspicious activity cards, which go to the state’s intelligence center. The deputies, on the other hand, dismissed Robinson’s account and left Repent to carry on.

Meanwhile the trooper stayed nearby. Deputies later received a report that the DPS trooper was “harassing” Repent. The deputies returned to find four “extremely upset” Repent members. “Big John” Leinen complained to the deputies that the trooper had treated them “like some sort of terrorist group.” Grisham claimed that the trooper had assaulted one of his people and broke a piece off the group’s video camera. The trooper told deputies he had observed Repent going through Robinson’s dumpster and asked why the deputies “didn’t write the protestors [sic] a citation for ‘disturbing the peace’.” The deputy answered, “because they aren’t disturbing the peace.” Deputies asked the trooper to leave, and no tickets were issued.

The swingers were mystified: How did Repent find out about the party? The invited guests had been carefully screened; the event hadn’t been advertised online; and Robinson’s home is miles outside of town. Grisham claims he has an “inside source” but will say nothing more. With law enforcement on the sidelines, swingers have retaliated in other ways. Assault charges are pending against Monica Mead after Russell Grisham claimed he was assaulted outside the club. Mead contends she accidentally fell into Grisham. Charges were also filed against swinger Phillip Roark, who admits to slapping a video camera held by Russell Grisham.

Meanwhile, Repent has put the Meads on the brink of bankruptcy. Since the protests started last year, the Route 66 building has been rented just three times, forcing the couple to put it up for sale. For Repent, God had delivered a victory. The group snatched up a Web site the Meads had let lapse, Route66SwingersClub.com, and turned it into a call for “adulterers” to “Repent or Perish!”

If it weren’t for the giant wooden cross over the porch, the Grisham house would be indistinguishable from the other middle-class homes on the quiet street. Inside, visitors are greeted by a tidy, if somewhat shabby, interior. I interview Grisham and his fourth wife, Tracy, a pleasant, moon-faced woman whose bangs hang in her eyes, and Leinen, who asked to videotape our interview. Later, several men in their teens and early 20s show up dressed in camouflage pants. They sit staring at laptops and don’t say much.

In person, Grisham is friendly and polite. “I was a sexual sinner before I got saved. I got saved seven years ago. Prior to that–yeah, I’ve been to strip joints and porn shops. I’ve done all kinds of things,” he says. “We understand the destructive power of sin firsthand. We’ve lived it. We’ve walked in those shoes.” These days he’s celebrating Repent’s victory over the swinger’s club. “We felt it was like the tip of the spear for sexual immorality for the devil in Amarillo,” he says. “So we went after that specifically, and we exposed it so it would wither and die. And it has.”

Repent has made it clear that its crusade won’t end with the swingers. Last January, community theater group Avenue 10 was set to open Bent, a play about the persecution of homosexuals during Nazi Germany. The day before opening night, the fire marshal, police and code enforcers showed up, tipped off by a Repent associate, according to Sirc Michaels, co-founder of the theater. Avenue 10 didn’t have the right permit for holding events, and the space was shut down.

What’s next for Repent? They’ve posted a “Warfare Map” on the group’s Web site. The map includes establishments like gay bars, strip clubs and porn shops, but also the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center. Repent believes the 600-acre prairie park’s Walmart-funded “Earth Circle,” used for lectures, is a Mecca for witches and pagans. Also on the list are The 806 coffeehouse (a hangout for artists and counterculture types), the Islamic Center of Amarillo (“Allah is a false god”), and “compromised churches” like Polk Street Methodist (gay-friendly).

As I’m preparing to leave the Grisham house, Russell announces that CNN has called and asked for a live interview. In January, Repent caused a stir when the group rolled out BoycottHouston.com, a Web site that urges economic sanctions against Houston because the mayor is gay and a large Planned Parenthood building is being built. In the Bible, Jesus commands his disciples to spread the good news of the gospel throughout the nations. It remains to be seen whether Pastor Grisham’s slightly less uplifting message will resonate outside the High Plains.

STORY LINK

Is Religion Stringing You Along?

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:30:50 PST

By Dealdoctor --

This story in the NY Times below was beyond weird to me. Orthodox Jews are taught not to carry things on Sabbath but it seems there is this workaround called an “eruv”.

Image by neoliminal via Flickr

Would it be worth $100,000 to you to expand your “eruv”? Did you know one of the worst things about this year’s harsh winter is that it has caused holy havoc to the entire “eruv” system in some cities?

I mean when an “eruv” system collapses it is like finding a porno magazine in a fundamentalist church on Sunday morning where the hymnal should be instead. Should you hide it under the pew cushion or call an usher or just scream? OMG’sh! The real world certainly can collide with religion.

If you think your Christian fundamentalism had you tied up in knots at least you did not have to worry about any Baptist, Pentecostal or Charismatic “eruvs”. Have you ever felt like religion was “stringing you along?’ This is damn freaking “eruv” stuff is nonsense to the extreme .

NY TIMES ARTICLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/06/us/06religion.html?em

ERUV PICTURES AND MORE
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/a-translucent-wire-in-the-sky/

DETAILS ON ERUV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv