Humans behave like individual heard animals. Superorganisms, like termites, ants & bees, function as one entity (Eurekalert). But humans know the difference, so they have the capability for altruistic sacrifice. The problem is probably lack of identity with the society that claims to represent them. i.e. Soldiers don't usually fight for political ideals, they fight for the friends in their platoon.

Meanwhile, in America:
What happens to madmen when they die? does jesus forgive them? (of course) what if they were evil? (then no) How does a madman know right from wrong? How does anyone prove they are not mad? That's a bottomless question, better to pass the buck instead & not look. Governor George Wallace paid some shrinks for a certificate that said he was sane. He framed it, but said he had no illusions about it's value (several thousand dollars).

Learning How to Think. Also Religious advice parallels financial advice (Wired)
5 things you'll need if you go homeless
Selecting for "Tameness"
"Most religious leaders are fools" (bbc)
If Atheists ruled the world (YouTube)

That the church doesn't present a community that's acceptable to everyone could be expected, there's a lot of variation among people. That it doesn't address reality is a side effect of faith. If my friend, call him Joe (story posted below: Thursday, February 26, 2009), had consulted the church about his experience, he could have been admonished about the hubris of bragging about miracles, or told that what seems real to one person may not seem so to another, or advised that it was a sign from god & to pray for guidance, or recommended to drug rehab. (depending on how sane he appeared to be). I find it refreshing though that they probably wouldn't have accused him of lying, just because they don't expect to be lied to (though that makes them pretty gullible targets for anyone w/ a profit/power motive).

So when cultivating miracles, one doesn't just resolve that one will occur and then label something odd as miraculous. Oh no-no-no! One must The Force generate. That's no shit.
One must self discipline have:

• Have you ever wondered why Monks or the Catholic clergy are expected to be celibate? It's a time honored method for cracking loose of convention, selfish or otherwise. The sexual imperative is a real motivator of perspective. You can either go with it & become it, or use it as a reminder that there's a kind of parallel universe that has no use for it. I admit I have no idea how they use the energy they accumulate, there are more and more rarified levels of bureaucracy in the church, each w/ it's own arcane rules. My suspicion is that they've inadvertently messed up the natural course for dealing with it, what w/ angles and devils and permission from higher up the chain of command, and then there's the Sith & all those alter boys... I'm pretty sure though that it's not just grandstanding for the sake of the rustics, they must know something's going on. My guess is they've forgotten that a lotta sex depletes personal power, and some folks that are required to be celibate, for bureaucratic reasons, maybe shouldn't be teaching children.
  
• Fasting works.
  
• Scheduled meditation (a kind of prayer), say at 8 PM every day. Randomly, maybe not so much.
  
• Running, Jogging, walking, crawling, etc.
  
• Regular cold showers. (hair shirts?)
  
• Gypsying, Walkabouts, Pilgrimages.
  
• Other cultures have other methods that I can only guess at. Nomadic people have ritual dances & songs for locating game, only performed when food is short and there's no other option (see #2). Joe had some experience with ritual dances, and songs, they're usually private intellectual property. They work, but one needs permission to use them. For example, the Hopi Rain Dance.
  

All evoke a greater or lesser degree of controlled desperation, and beg the question "why am I doing this?" The answer should be "for my people", anything else will develop into a distortion and Sasquach you will become. Countering the influence of witches was the churches defining project for at least several hundred years, what w/ "the horned god" & all representing evil.

So this is Joe's recipe for what to do when you're stranded in a strange town w/ no money or contacts. Before you go door to door trying to sell your body or your $300 camera for gas money: fast for 3 or 4 days. Something will come up. Works every time & saves on food too.

See, all this assumes personal power equals faith, so faith can corrupt perception because events may be expected to accommodate needs. (i'nish Allah). Then when an evidence based event occurs, such as through scientific procedure, it can appear to be irrelevant or even inimical to faith. With that perspective, the church would be wise to organize the freelance shamanistic tendencies of the parish to preserve some semblance of peace & sanity. But to declare it all evil if it contradicts ecclesiastic policy is hypocritical, it's a human birthright, get over it.

Sasquach
Ok, now the point: Say there was a group of people that became so fluent with the exercise of their personal power, that they could exist outside of society. They would have to either look like everyone or else avoid people altogether (or both) kind of like the illumanatti (this would explain the hairy 8 foot tourists in bermuda shorts). But say this group split off thousands of years ago & never bothered to keep up holiday cards w/ the Muggles. It's said that a society of Big Foots couldn't exist because the scattered gene pool, (based on "sightings") would make sexual encounters virtually impossible. Whoever presented that argument has obviously never tried celibacy for very long, or considered the area that could be covered by a person w/ motivation and a 6 foot stride. True believers will now go outside and howl for 5 minutes.

Are You Friends With an Atheist? An American profile
The State of Atheism Address
There’s a new power in America - atheism
How to Spot Atheists and Report Them to the FBI
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
-President George Bush (aka "a Uniter, not a Divider")
symptoms of schizophrenia
Religious majority doesn't understand atheist views (Michigan State Univ, statenews.com)
New Research Suggests Key to Happiness is Gratitude—and Men May be Locked Out (George Mason Univ.)
Seattle's Version of the Atheist bus projects (friendlyatheist.com)

The church has pretty much failed to do what it claimed, which is to provide shelter and comfort to people in need. Instead they get indoctrinated. There's not much comfort in that unless you're really desperate, it's more like a community of idiots w/ patronizing jailers. The whole thrust of the church is business and indoctrination with fixed forms. "Of course we're open to all suggestions, but if you want salvation, ..."

What exactly is salvation? it's a state of "grace" (bliss, happiness, contentment, satisfaction, having confidence in the future, etc.) It's achievable by "faith" that is, believing something is predominantly important (even if it isn't), such as the church community and belief system. That's not so rare, I mean that's the final hook offered by any religion, call it what you like.

Here's "Bill's Religious Method For Getting Shed Of Your Load Of Earthly Care" (shortened to BRMFGSOYLOEC):
Stay focused on anything which doesn't require another person's input, till it becomes more important than anything else, such as running from a forest fire. The forest fire isn't necessary to achieve the result, it's just an example of the ideal commitment. When your thoughts wander, just redirect them to the original point. Sounds Buddhist doesn't it? It is, and BRMFGSOYLOEC gives you the Cosmic Power to ignore bullshit, however it's not as easy as letting someone feed you a special piece of cracker & tell you you're saved, but it is more convincing. You aren't required to offend anyone by being a missionary, and your sister won't get stoned to death for going outdoors without a mask.

The coming evangelical collapse (Yahoo news)
Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds (USA today). This is too bad really, but a million smiling hypocrites vs instant public scrutiny, I guess it's inevitable.

Dear fellow atheists. Lets piss off the world and claim the '@' sign as the official sign of atheism. (self.atheism). It'll never happen.

10 Most Revealing Psych Experiments

Univ. Toronto Researchers find brain differences between believers and non-believers (eurekalert), 1. Stroop effect 2. Stroop test

Pride: The 7th Sin

Given the differences in cultures, the Large Hadron Collider is basically looking for the same thing that Thomas Aquinas defined as god: 5 arguments for the existence of god the Quinquae viae. The main difference is in how it's represented. It's the writers opinion that neither one is practical for achieving it's purpose, but the 5 arguments define the problem and the LH Collider is a serious effort in that direction.

One of the things that bugs me about the church is the ambiguity of terms and methods between sects. If one of them had more credibility than another, maybe word would get out. Instead it's a race to scrape the bottom for something new. Like programming commands, calling it logic doesn't make it logical. You'd think something as personal and inherent as ones relationship w/ the world would have a default form, where a priest/shrink interpreter isn't mandantory. Everybody has teachers but it gets so formalized, like Tenure, Church and the Crips all require commitment and fidelity in exchange for a sense of security. For professional advancement, members learn a more and more specialized perspective, till the they only think in those terms. When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. A self limiting philosophy.

The Named is the mother of all things. Language shapes perception it takes 200 milliseconds between when an observation occurs and when it's internalized verbal description is formed. During those 200 milliseconds, the "meaning" is fluid. it could be anything.

15 quotes from famous Atheists w/ comments

Dr Jack Horner (Paleontologist): "Religion is about faith, not evidence. Comparing science and religion isn't like comparing apples and oranges—it's more like apples and sewing machines." Horner wants to retro-engineer a (small) dinosaur from a chicken, partly for the scientific knowledge to be gained, and partly because he likes dinosaurs.

Alas, I must bail on my promise to list my unexplainable personal coincidences. As a member of the psychedelic generation, I cannot exceed certain social mores which prescribe the endless detailing of marvelous trips. If you've ever been buttonholed by a gibbering panhandler, you'll know why. I can assure you however that the stories were more fantastic then the fever dreams of the entire Bush Administration, though unfortunately they didn't include sex, violence, money, or world domination. Not a lot anyway.

But they did offer some interesting etiological questions about cause and effect. In fact, without another explanation, it would be reasonable to attribute the phenomena to influences of an unseen social entity. Some people say the world is a result of the social interaction between people and unseen beings, who 's awareness adds coherency and who created physical stuff so it could fulfill some kind of destiny (which obviously happened, so that's the proof).

For example: Some guy is having trouble with his car's clutch, he can't afford to have it fixed in a shop, he's never pulled an engine, and doesn't have the tools. What to do? He walks uptown to have some coffee, he doesn't drive because his clutch is out (in a fairly large city) and while crossing a random street, glances up the block and spies an innocuous brown paper lunch sack on the curb. He has a distinct impression that the sack contains the tools he needs. "That's illogical" he tells himself and continues up to the Café. Thoughts about the bag keep gnawing on him though, so he resolves to look on the way back, if it's still there. It is, he does, and there are the tools.

What happened?

• If it was it god or the devil, then whatever happened to the guy and that car since, is the intended result. As superior social beings, it's their fault or credit. They are accountable, and he's just a hapless pawn.
  
• It was god "A" getting revenge on god "B", concerning some fracas that took place long ago in a galaxy far, far away.
  
• He subconsciously overheard someone talking about exactly what he needed, when he needed it, giving the location. So it was a simple matter to go over and pick it up.
  
• Good or evil had nothing to do with it. Like Remote Viewing, used by the US and Russia during the Cold War (and practically every shamanic culture), it was his own desire and awareness that located the nearest available tools that he needed. ("cosmic consciousness" dude) The Café excursion was just an excuse of logic. (rent the DVD "Suspect Zero", the movie is kind'a harsh, but there's a bonus clip on remote viewing that seems authentic).
  
  • A word of caution about Remote Viewing: I decided to buy a course from Ed Ames was appalled by his crass & commercial presentation. It's possible that the problem lies with the ad agency, but even so, it's an insult to the buyers who make up that market. It cost $300 which is another way of saying "Greedy stupid people pay outlandish money for our unproven product because they think it will give them anything they want! We have nothing to loose by insulting your intelligence because we don't respect you anyway!". You have to ask to get off their spam list, or they'll assume you'll want to buy 50 other CDs w/ similar crap for the same price.
    
• The story could be fake.

Although I have that story from the most credible source possible, there's no way to prove it. The only reason for you to take my word would be if believing benefits you somehow. for example:

• someone offers you 72 virgins &/or a place at gods right hand after you're dead.
  
• retelling will amaze your friends so you gain stature (unless you blow it). You get to be seen, at ease, with rich guys and your social superiors if you tell their story and lend them credibility. By retelling their story, you establish your own social superiority, and can then qualify to join the republican party, or the church & be saved from the forked tongue of The Deceiver.
  
• it agrees with your previous experience.

How many times have you picked up the phone and knew who the caller was before they spoke? Some other occasions might be: knowing that something is imminent, like a cop car is behind you, your kid is waking up, someone or a piece of information is about to arrive.

Stuff happens all the time, the problem is that it's a sin to question god.


church essentials
Atheism in search of an identity more (I don't like the asterisk, #9 is my choice)

Ok, Ok, so god doesn't ignore you because he answered your secret longing. I can't argue specifics if someone wants to hang gods name on the cause, but there are other possibilities. The framework of expectation determines the probable cause, ask a cop, even an objective one. Unreasonable faith is not a credible aspiration.

Yaaaah! Awaken oh religious people, you're not gullible enough, you should be ashamed! wups that's what got you into this mess, silly me. Unreasonable Faith isn't something to brag about, it's swallowing 7200 pounds of pure and unblemished virgin crap in one gulp. It might make the Guinness world record for credulity, but the only way you'll ever be respected for "unreasonable faith" is by explaining the reasoning behind it. Good luck. You do it because everyone else in your community does it. If they all went to war, would you go too? ... OK, wrong question, how about: If they all met weekly to recite banal platitudes that justify righteous arrogance and condescension toward others, would you do it ... ahh .. too? Why is this so hard? The Lord must be messing with me. OK but which Lord? Hamlet had this problem when a ghost claiming to be his Dad told him that he'd been murdered.

Thus I propose a Play to be staged, the plot shall be such that it shall portray the symphony of society, wherein the wealthy shall be played by the homeless, the homeless shall be played by the rich, the Devout shall portray Atheistst, the clergy shall play the whore, .. uh ok, but every other station and situation shall be interpreted by it's nemesis. I myself shall be the director and everyone shall surely give me timely advice in all that I should do.

Well that looks like a mess, but we'll see who chickens out first.

How to create less selfish societies (physorg) a kind-of-hard read.
Atheists banned from public service in 6 states

Coming soon: My personal list of unexplainable coincidences. Don't miss it!

Not enough Jihad lately?
Islam makes the offer of 72 virgins, like it's an incentive. Most men have enough trouble with only one. It's true girls can be sweet, but 2 or more can also be remorselessly catty & vindictive. With just one person's attention to compete for, I imagine all those martyrs will about now be hiding out in heavens tractor shed, speaking in whispers. No wonder it's part of the offer, it probably screens for total ignorance, or a tendency to suicide. Wasn't Mohammed famous for being an honest judge, a critical thinker and peacemaker, like when some tribes were at war, or about to start one? Duh.

Meanwhile in other news, more religious myth: The Jewish "Race"

*****************************************************************

The case for multiple gods
(I'm not selling this, it just seems worth considering since the 3 main western religions are all monotheistically attached to the same god, and behave like selfish idiots):

Without feedback, how would you know you exist? You'd be like in a coma. If you're God, where do you get self awareness? There needs to be something "other" for perception to occur. Where does the other come from? If you're God and are self aware, there must be something else. If you're "The One God", you should be completely spaced out and unaware of everything, without need or conflict. (even dreams require hormonal plumbing and a physiology to support it). Seem trivial? I think not, it's absolute proof that god ignores you because he doesn't exist. religions are all part of a big plot, see ... yawn.

ok, it's not just Yaweh, they're all full of bullying manipulators, (you're not guilty enough). So why do we even consider something as unprovable as a god? More about playing the "getting conned" game: 20% of crime confessions are false (Scientific American), and false confessions (also Scientific American). I keep coming back to it so much that it's starting to sound (to me) like old news. There's a thesis there, get on it (somebody).

Maybe I'm going at this wrong: Here's someone in a hut throwing rocks at shadows, or a van full of hippies channeling Seth, or a bunch of people in a laboratory trying to retro-engineer a primary algorithm. Their results all conflict, since causality is lacking & nothing makes sense, we'll just trust that the folks that feed us, won't eat us (no guarantee, so keep your head down) and faith claims the day.

But non conclusion doesn't equate w/ confusion, it's not the result that's of interest, it's the process of formulation. nonsense is relative to the observer. The part of the brain that makes sense of what we see, is connected to the part that trusts. It's like basic orientation, the confidence that an observation won't change when one blinks (which is a dead giveaway that you're dreaming, and/or proof of hallucination). Said confidence is taken for granted (especially if you're a slight-of-hand artist), and used for locating ones self in relation to the world, a ram buffer for short term memory. Bummer when you find you've been driving for 10 minutes and forgot where you are & don't recognize landmarks? Why would that make a person feel insecure, & insecure of what? getting mugged? going crazy? wandering empty streets till you starve, run out of gas & are finally eaten by zombies (happens all the time)? Believing in confusion is what makes it confusing. "God is unknowable" no kidding, duh, if that's part of the definition, why go there? It's also possible that god is just another word for whatever happens, & life goes on as well by any other name, except without all the guilt & exploitation.

Please check out the following links, especially Jesus and Mo (NOTE: The depiction of Mohammed is actually a look-alike stand in, but Jesus isn't). Also Russell's Teapot
Nov. 25: NY Post Reports that due to a broken Jaw, Ann Coulter's mouth has been wired shut. Atheists everywhere are given momentary pause. From Tom Tomorrow

God's a name for the object of a person judging themselves. It's probably too late now, but if I were an ancient dictator, I'd say how I have a divine right to rule, and how god has a short & gruesome cure for dissent. Then I'd levee taxes that will reveal non-believers as traitors. They all did it, Moses, Ashurbanipal, Ramses, Genghis Khan. It's a sign of civilization if not enlightenment. Saddam was going to resurrect the glory of Babylon & I think the Bushes were jealous of his hubris, so they had a war. But these things don't stay in the publics awareness for very long. I suspect as soon as the outrage wears off & the hormones evaporate, something else will come along. Religion and atheism will both loose favor as that polarization recedes too. Self judgments need a social context, like some group to identify with, what a politician would call "an issue". Who's side are you on?

Many Americans doubt the morality of atheists (St Petersberg Times)
Atheists dealing with death
Religion may have evolved because of its ability to help people exercise self-control.
Thomas Jeffersons advice to his nephew on religion (#4).
Demographics of Atheism (Wikipedia)
Brain mechanisms of social conformity (eurekalert)
The next big religion UFO cults
When prophecy fails How to rationalize the difference between what's expected and what actually happens.
Atheists that believe in god
Butterflies and Wheels Command central in the war against fashionable nonsense

ok here we are again in Faerie: I have beneath this satin cloth, a small box (whoosh) pretty isn't it? it was made that way to elicit curiosity, and given by Jupiter to the first woman (not Eve) to illustrate the complications of knowledge. So like once you know something, it becomes an indelible point of reference in your intellect. Even though the discovered thingie may only be an unprovable plausibility, there's no way you can erase it's existence (except with lots and lots of drugs, but which again compound the distraction). So whatever you do, don't think about some secret govt. agency watching through your desktop video cam.

Now inside this box (creak) is a personal problem which everyone has .. (fumble - rummage), Ah-Hah! there he is, it's God. No, don't let him out, he just makes trouble, ... oh shit.

Now we have to explain him away, & how we gonna do that with him floating around, morphing faster than HIV. Maybe we could just ignore him.

I saw on reddit that Christians wonder why Atheists feel they have to put Christians down, indeed atheists wonder why Christians put Atheists down. It's probably the same thing, like each community has it's own team, whatever the topic. My own experience is that Christians are mostly ok & only those who try to talk about faith (or lack if it) require repression. The missionary spirit is obnoxious, unacceptably conceited, overbearing, inconsiderate, impolite, condescending, oppressive, insulting, and very very ignorant. When it talks about faith and belief in the bible as the word of god, faith is not reasonable (this is bad). Reason connects prior experiences between people, faith doesn't and blithely offers no substitute. It is it's own answer, you have to have it before you understand. Having faith is like being trained in martial arts. Nobody can possibly touch you, every opposing posture has a counter position. If you die, it's a noble death. You're innocent as George Bush because the most obvious and egregious lie in the name of faith is unquestionable.

Why not faith in astrology? I can see small groups of smiling clean cut astrology missionaries going door to door, handing out glossy pamphlets showing the possible end of the world if funding isn't found to study the orbits of near earth asteroids. Dudes, here's my free astrology software.

More than any other world view or philosophy, faith requires trusting someone else's experience over your own. I have a problem with any blank check on my credibility. Human awareness is built on a learned description, which limits what we allow ourselves to know, to mainly things which we can communicate. The sources of these things (authority figures and social conventions), require trusting someone else's experience over our own. Though that process is the backbone of primate society, those sources may still be in error. Unfortunately, the error is too often intentional.

Some studies with monkeys showed that when one masters a game played with other monkeys, to win food, the master must allow the other to win 40% of the time, or the others won't play and nobody gets food. The odds there were 6 to 4 for being conned based on trust. Humans are at least more trusting (6.5 to 3.5), if not smarter, as shown by Experiments in social conformity & torture (BBC). Also see: Placebos, belief and trust (eurekalert.org). These odds for being conned don't differentiate players who know they're being conned, but go along because it's better than to challenge authority and risk receiving some kind of reprimand.

Even so, I think the church (all of them) has done a pretty good job of making people happy and dumb. Things could be worse (1) than structured forgiveness, and having a large percent of social misfits held in check by benign neglect because they're socially accepted. However you cut it though, some percent of people will game the system opportunistically. The worst of these either feel socially alienated or are psychopathic. I'd imagine that if the cause was alienation, it would be a mistake to punish them by alienating them further.

Mark Twain on "The Fall of Man" w/ links to other good stories)
_____________

(1) Worse: the American prison system, the alternate patron of misfits (2), offers no absolution or social acceptance at all, teaches that inmates are inhuman, and offers rape, a broken spirit, eternal damnation and hell. Misfits find their only society to be other misfits and so form a default team, exchanging ideas and methodologies, until a pool of the dammed becomes available for antisocial efforts (like Blackwater, Mexican drug cartels, or The Joker). When this group reaches critical mass, a war against them becomes politically justifiable.

(2) the term "misfits" is used broadly here to include the nonviolent and offenders of statistics.

It's the writers opinion that we owe our existence to god thusly:
Without the ingratiating influence of religious manipulators, we'd all be murdering yetis, and our civilization could have never evolved.

Of course, we're not done yet, and the most probable scenario for global nuclear war seems to be about religion.

However the most powerful decision makers don't necessarily benefit from organized religion. When their sweating finger lays possessively on THE BUTTON, and the demons of indecision flap about, who ya gonna call? In fact the one man I would give kudos to without reservation is the Soviet Submarine officer who chose not to start WW3 over the Cuban missiles while everyone else was hooting and beating their chest. He walked (sailed) away, and as we all know, commies are atheists. And we're still here. The next day politicians in the Kremlin and Washington, were washing out their pants, thanking god that someone had the brains to stop.

Well ok, that example couldn't possibly represent every world shaking decision supported by faith in god, or lack of it. But I'd feel secure in betting any amount of cash, that more wars have been waged in gods name than in the name of atheism. It's true that Joe Stalin and chairman Mao killed more than 50 million of their own people, but they were fighting with religious believers. Marxism & Communism have only been around about 100 years, but some version of god has been w/ us for 10 thousand +. Politicians need to generate enthusiasm & hormones to accomplish what truth and reason would show to be the benefit of a tiny minority.

God will always be a tool of the state because it (He) represents the ultimate in plausible deniability. Actually the state is a natural result of a religious elite (like the priority of chicken or egg, they're hard to separate). As a unique species of genocidal ape, we really do need something to balance our tendency to mass psychopathy, with something less murderous. A "moral religion" works, w/ self denial, monasteries, places of commitment, houses of worship, a social order greater than the individual, & warrior monks (aka drones). So someone takes on a role as a seer or healer or confessor, gets backers & starts negotiating political deals. Making people feel good about it is THE required skill, anyone physically big enough can intimidate people to get Poon. but playing the good guy too, wins committed allies, then we can all get poon even though we're short & scrawny.

God favors them wot favors themselves:


the problem w/ peace on earth is bullies. see we have "The Peace Makers" (aka plebeian hippy fags) in one corner, and we have "The Entitled" (aka "The Righteous") in the other corner. The Peace Makers must somehow represent their ideal, so they reject aggression. This makes them defenseless, sullen, passive-aggressive emo-Goths. The Entitled must live to a code which challenges the non-entitled (this is why have-nots don't have), and allows The Righteous claim to anything they want because god is on their side. Anyone who can't or won't defend themselves is suicidal & therefore destined for hell anyway, so screw the punk ass hippy peacemaker. Yes, well this evidence indicates that hippy fagism may one day save everyone's butt from tumescent, self serving religious bureaucracies, oddly in the same way that Judaism validated it's self to Rome. Thusly:

Rome was tolerant of "all" religions, but a real religion had to show some divine connection to qualify. Some carpenter claiming to be the son of god sounded lame even then, but fulfillment of prophecies were a good way to show gods favor. So the Pharisees spoke craftily among themselves saying "Lo, we can turn this nut to our benefit. if we denounce him now, he'll fulfill the prophecy of the Messiah dying on the tree". The tree symbolism is a reference to ol' timey hebrew procedure dealing w/ uppity political figures and screwballs, by tieing them up in a tree till they agreed to recognize the existing social order (cheaper than jails & more practical if y'all live in tents). If the screwball stubbornly expired before he acquiesced, then he retroactively got gods blessing in order to appease his family, or clan, who might have hairy backs, and number several hundred. So that's what they did & said to Rome "hey lookit what you did" & naturally Rome couldn't deny it's own divinity, so Judaism became a recognized religion because Roman law fulfilled the prophesy. though it still took awhile to iron out the details because they were, as now, somewhat pig headed.

So, Buddha & Jesus theory used sort of the same plan to organize peacemakers: they set up a code of inclusion so that some demographic of The Righteous would already be on their side. It turns out that's like herding cats, which is said to be impossible (beats tetris), unless there's also something that attracts cats to make them clump together. One of the "somethings" is the "honor" of defending peace through violence rather than Hippy Fagism, so we're right back where we started, only now "We have met the enemy, and he is us" (P. Possum, 1970).

How warfare shaped human evolution (newscientist)
sex and war

So ok lets get practical, the traditional social model doesn't allow peaceful resolution when things get dire because hormones trump communication & reason. There are however thousands of Emos (not the bird) who would pay good money (that means probably not in American dollars) to get into a sexual relationship w/ "the enemy" for altruistic reasons. Japan recognized this potential at the end of WW2. Expecting victorious Americans to overrun the country, raping & pillaging, they offered a front line of "Geishas" to take the hormonal edge off the first wave, and offer an alternate dynamic. It was a noble gesture and it may have saved the country, but like most alternate dynamics, we'll never know. I understand Japan now owns most of the automobile market as well as the financial debt for Bush & Cheney's war, so retrospectively it may have been a working strategy (for the sake of Americas national pride). Actually, I don't expect the religious right, or anyone else, to get behind this (historical precedent is against me), but it's a seldom considered alternative: Take a Bonobo to lunch, and Make Love Not War, but don't expect respect unless you're dominant (and you're not).

But if you are, this is the most terrifying picture I've ever seen. Readers with a tenuous grip on moral ethics definitely should not
(no, god! don't do it ) --> ! CLICK HERE ! <--
fag comix (sinfest)
voodoo dance of opposites 1 (sinfest)
voodoo dance of opposites 2 (sinfest)
voodoo dance of opposites 3 (sinfest)
voodoo dance of opposites 4 (sinfest)
voodoo dance of opposites 5 (sinfest)
epidemics of fear (sciencedaily)
cars have personality (faces) (eurekalert)
Atheist may sue if law on Las Vegas officiants won't change (latimes)

Everything we conceptualize is in relation to other people. so we're at odds w/ parts of the world that don't show things we can either represent to or as people. there's just no way to grasp it. justify anything: it comes down to it's social value.

Krill for example: obscure little shrimp like bug thingies that live in the open ocean and form the major part of baleen whale diets. Their value as individuals is unthinkable, we don't have anything in common. they're lousy conversationalists. our interest in them is mainly: how might we exploit them to make a point of conjecture, or rip off their protein.

so what do krill do when they're bored? like us, it's sex & food. they aren't too concerned w/ housing because they're free swimming, although they do migrate between temperature clines to follow plankton (which they eat). Like us, they swarm in colonies for protection, but they have no word for "landlord".

The Lords of Creation were sitting around discussing how cool it was to be a Lord, when some fool asked "hey, what's a lord anyhow" Lords Shango and Loki laughed mightily (as lords are wont to do), and incinerated him on the spot. "That's a Lord, fool" There was no reply. Then Jesus, who was the Lord of Lords said "So like, what's next, dudes? We really needed that guy so we can be lords"


see, EVERYTHING describable must have a social value or it's meaningless & just not interesting. Abstractions become anthropomorphic with social labels. Straight lines grow eyes and feet.

Atheist Toast
why people believe in supernatural stuff
Anthropologist Develops New Approach to Explain Religious Behavior
How an Amazonian tribe turned a missionary into an Atheist(freethinker.co.uk)
Application for godship
Why bad things happen
another deadbeat god

Here's 2 dozen versions of the bible and comments. I admire this guy because he allows comments. I don't allow them because bible thumpers (to me) are irrational and it depresses me that the god of natural selection hasn't struck them all dead. So ok, you exist, you win, evolution works.

Dated and droll as it may be, the carnage, treachery, incest and obscenity in the Bible only represents the real world. Most, if not all, of it's authors are talking about how to deal with disillusionment without running away or taking a shotgun down to the local Mac Donalds to even the score. Unfortunately something gets lost in the translation. Fortunately, it gets us by because we can always surmise the intent of the teaching, based on the desires of our social superiors (like pop culture gods). Unfortunately, that doesn't actually resolve the problem, it only makes us appear to be as normal as our social superiors (like MIchael Jackson, Brittney, Adolph HItler, Jim Jones, OJ Simpson, or George Bush ll). Like, here's an article on normal sexual aberration in animals, unfortunately (or not), they're not aberrations, fortunately (or not) they have almost nothing to do with the church.

Whether you think (like me) that heaven is in your head, or someplace physical like Jones Town, the recognizable property of heaven is that things are good there. It's a model of goodness that people keep trying to build up around us. Some models are a fortress, some are open. In theory it doesn't matter if it's closed or open, but in practicality, it does. A closed heaven in your head, isn't heaven. An open heaven in Guyana, invites malaria & probably criticism from neighboring (richer, and more heavenly) heavens.

heaven is an amusement park that never closes

Though everyone agrees that heaven is the ideal model (even satanists, for them hell is heaven), we still can't reach agreement on phrases like "heavenly music" or "heaven on earth". Governmental ambassadors, judicial intermediaries, hand shakes, gift exchanges, marriages, & all kinds of formal acknowledgments still don't do the trick because we're separated from the world by respect. not that we shouldn't respect the world (god knows we don't anyhow), rather, we should be the world, the world is us. Live the dream.

A god driven universe is, is frankly absurd, it has the same deductive rationale as geocentrism & a flat earth. more so if the universe is the product of a god made by man. Evidence for this is in the righteousness of any religion, they can't all be right, but they can all be wrong.

This is just a guess: If I were god (which of course I am), I'd develop an alter ego so there'd be some kind of feedback. Then I'd get into heated debates about irrelevant crap, based on whomever had the idea first & is thus the original. Then I'd jump on the bastard & beat the shit out of him for being so disrespectful, and place him in some kind of parallel continuum like heaven, or hell where he would be handy to validate my existence, but be unable to bug me otherwise. The deal being: as soon as I'm through with existence, you can have it, (smirk smirk) so he never gets it. (giggle)

Like I was talking to God the other day & he said "Alas my creations are unbearably stupid. It reflects on me, not because they fight constantly like unruly brats, but because they don't recognize the value of being number 2. Like, it's simply not possible for everyone to be number one and those that think they are should remember Katrina and be vigilant to stay clear of my path."

So I'm like: "Woux, dude, I know how you mean, they got no respect."

An He's like: "Bless you my son"

An I'm like: "Yeah, made in Your image an being number 2 totally sucks"

And so that's how I got this smoking crater where my head used to be. Now I'm thinking maybe we should redesign the western Pantheon of God, Jesus, Mother Mary, Saint Elmo, Satan, Bezelbub & anybody else you have a problem with, to be a more socially viable if we want to avoid Armageddon & ten thousand (more) years of strife & conflict. Some suggestions are:

1) nobody with gods arrogance will ever find peace in the world, so thenceforth god will no longer be number one, so if (as they say) we're made in His image, we won't then be reflecting his selfishness and can afford to be more agreeable to get along.



2) Jesus must screw, all the hippy Jesuses did (god kicked them out of heaven for it & gave them aids). But Jesus is "God in the flesh" with human faults and he never screws? that dog don't float, it's just trouble waiting to happen, so make it ok, god needs grandkids.

3) Satan and the minions of hell shall be fallible. Like Santa Claus, the devil supposedly knows what you're thinking, and will punish you for it, forever. But why should the Fallen One provide the world with any reason to avoid eternity in screaming agony? It's counter productive. If I were the devil, I'd have a more laid back image, (maybe talking geckos for salesmen) and a more credible game plan, because ABSOLUTE, non negotiable anything is either a sign of A) challenge, or B) ignorance. Say it's challenge, Satan wants you to not fall for his gambit, like he's really Jehovah undercover, trying to make you good, but God wouldn't lie, and Satan wouldn't NOT want you to burn forever in eternal damnation. So it must be B) ignorance: Satan is therefore the Great Bush, and must bear the associated stigma of farce.

Gods Favor

While driving down the highway in my smoking VW bus, we find we're being followed closely. Not by the usual police, but by Hummers, Mercedes, and BMWs, i.e. gods chosen. We naturally assume they want us to teach them the meaning of existence, but actually they want to pass because we're going slower than the speed limit.

Meanwhile my alter ego, claiming gods favor, cruses the interstate at 10 miles over the speed limit. It's a state of grace, music is on the radio, the air conditioning is inaudible. In the slow lane, the poor people, humble and ignorant, strive to justify their existence. I have no problem with them, I'm courteous, gracious, they don't bother me unless they question my claim of Gods favor.

Claiming or even looking for gods favor is the egos ultimate expression, justification for any action, I do it because I'm righteous. (you infidel pig of a roach) (I meant that in a good way)

Stuff concerning the Texas branch of the new polygamist church of the latter day saints:

This post is more than atheistic & antisocial, it's probably tacky & I apologize for that, but it describes stuff that's simply not questioned, or acknowledged, stuff fundamental (if you will) to our own, and many other species lives. Stuff that should be referenced somehow before undertaking anything which might otherwise require a short prayer.

this is a partial, exemplary list of un-citizenly behaviors:

Disrespect is the main one, (all others follow) for example disrespect of the Sea, of Death, the Unknown, and areas of Karmic response (like pissed off motorists and large men w/ chainsaws wearing goalie masks). These require an assessment of potential for which we're unavoidably responsible, with the caveat of stupidity.
Stupidity is socially acceptable to respectable people, because a stupid person would seem to be unaware, and they make the lives of respectable people look coherent. Without The Stupid, their lives would be meaningless. Or rather, without someone stupider than ones self, the pecking order could shift up a notch, and irrelevancy could happen to YOU.

My 8th grade math class was seated by order of achievement. The girl of my dreams was at the front nearest the teachers desk (Mrs. Witt), I sat in the last seat farthest from the desk (but nearest the door), and behind several inbred hillbillies. Charlie R. sat in front of me, and gave me answers (IQ of 60, in 1959, Special Ed. was only one class during study hall), which were useless, but he was a genuinely good guy (and stupid). Charlie was a good guy because his survival trait was agreeability, he was forced to be sucessful because nobody had his back, whereas the hillbillies all had giant beetle browed cousins.

Shame can be great stuff, porn actors get off on it. It seldom gets real public scrutiny though, either by the people who like it or the people who hate it. So what is it?

Schmeegle the Gollum killed his fishing buddy. Some say it was out of greed, others say it was because he was weaker than the ring of power (well who isn't?). He was ashamed to hang with his people afterwards though, & the ring seemed to be enough to get by on. He was still Hobbit enough to honor those values he dumped on himself for, & he couldn't let go or reconcile, so he became schizophrenic. The fact that his insanity saved the world is seldom mentioned because his actions appeared to be selfish (rather than stupid or altruistic), but we'll never know for sure, so he'll mostly be remembered for his treachery and fantastic CGI animation.

Ok, treachery means selling out your people. If you're not ashamed for that, you're probably psychopathic (which means lacking the ability for remorse, and thus, you have a great future in politics), or inhuman. Inhuman isn't a fair lable though, because dogs are more loyal than people, even though they & other carnivores usually require food rewards for their loyalty, not so with Meercats in their own society, but they, like dogs, expect it from humans, so though I'm not an animal whisperer, I suspect their infidelity revolves around mistrust. As a human I couldn't blame them, but this definition is getting anthropomorphic, so lets get back to whatever the topic was, oh yeah... treachery, well that about covers it.

Now getting back to shame: the final judgment on shame comes from ones self, it's decided by what's really detrimental to personal success. Islamist, Jews, Meercats and Christians all follow approximately the same code when it comes to premarital sex, which is (in case you haven't heard) that you shouldn't do it.

How come?

Because un regulated population uses up more resources than the populators can supply (because they're otherwise distracted), so everybody looses (except psychopaths, and cannibals). So then why don't these societies promote birth control? It's not because laws governing marriage and promiscuous behavior were written before birth control existed, there's always been birth control (though often drastic in some respect).

Rather, the nature of power is such that it requires sacrifice and obeisance. And getting a population to deny their sexuality, (sometimes donating their forskins, or sewing up their vaginal labia) is real obesiance. Starting on a family level (because mom says), through tribal (because Cochise says), and (viola) ending with national policy and church doctrine (because W says). Leaders depend on ritual warfare, sacrifice, and ancestor worship to legitimize their rule. In the old days, some forced their retinue of wives, concubines, and servants to follow them into death. Meercats don't do that, but every baby Meercat is taught by physical & social contact, to stick with the group, and that ostracization is fatal, and stupid.

In other words, population control is a survival trait of the species, whereas powers' control over it's followers is a survival trait of the leader.

With this contradiction of intent, we have the formula for schizophrenic policy on who controls reproductive rights, which (like Schmeegle) can't let go or reconcile.

....

Part of the concern about sex comes from parents worried about breaking their family group, and part comes from social institutions concerned about losing control of their social base. Sex is dangerous to learn, not so much because of predators & pervs but more from hormonally forced rationalization, which causes a change of personal fidelity to be possible. To preserve continuity of known social patterns, both institutions have vested interests. A solution would be to formulate a structure for rationalization, that maintains existing ties. "Yes, you can spend the night over there, but call us first so we know where you are", & stuff like that. By the way, kid sex is at least as real to kids as grownup sex is to adults, the hormones sometimes aren't identical, but they still compel, and the result is the same.

Teaching kids about close encounters affects their social competitiveness as much as sports. The kind of teaching influences the effect. I don't advise anything though because acceptability changes from region to region, and the topic is usually taboo because of the above vested interests, so: Good Luck. A lot depends on the circumstances, of "the taboo topic which must not be named" though, and I suspect it's associated strictures are a lot like fundamentalist strictures everywhere, for example Mohammed said women shouldn't travel alone, for the simple reason that at the time it was dangerous, and he looked forward to a day when women could travel alone. But later fundamentalist interpretation (in this case, including the court) means "not ever, under any circumstances". The looming commitment of having "inter-age" sex in contemporary society, can't be applied equally, and it's easy for the stronger and more sophisticated partner to diminish the other. With that in mind, all kinds of legal protection for jail bait can inspire respect from even the most jaded pervert, but who protects the adult? Heck, adults can protect themselves, right? not if fundamentalistic judgment causes them to loose their job, home, family, & community respect. A court system that allow that (much less promotes it) assures it's own future relevance, but aggravates the problem.

The problem here is that the state enforces a set of values which are just as fundamentalisticly dumb as the Revised Church of the Latter Day Saints. Don't get me wrong, they both creep me out in their own way, but I can say that because I, (like the church and the state), have my very own blog which doesn't allow comment, so I don't have to consider opposing views :-)

Australian Aborigines have a system of keeping rampant sexuality under control by marrying everybody twice. The first marriage is at the age when kids are likely to cause trouble through social competition, or by creating indiscriminate, unwanted mouths to feed, at puberty, around 9 to 12. Their first spouse is typically an elder living alone because the elder's own second spouse has died. The effect of the old/young marriage is that it pairs both groups w/ each other at an age when they can most agreeably benefit from their partners age, the kid learns about social responsibility, has boundless sexual energy that keeps the elder focussed and competitive, and the elder has someone to care for them and make them socially relevant. The first marriage lasts till the elder dies, like about 5 to 15 years. Then the kid is an adult who has learned to take care of a household, and is free to marry again to have kids of their own. The Aborigine culture has persisted for 10 to 40 thousand years, in a land where even ants struggle to survive, until european laws made it illegal to have sex with kids.

Here's some idly interesting links

mega-preacher scandals and pentecostal meltdown

and Wauism

I used to belong to Bokonon but it turned out to be a scam that wrecked the world.

But this one explains a lot:
“If you fail to read (the Bible) properly, then you begin your just damnation. If you are unresponsive … God will scourge you, and everything will fail you until you are at utter defiance with your flesh,”
The birth of christian fundamentalism came w/ the first printing of the Bible in common english in 1525.


Todays rant:
Awhile back (a year or so?) there was a theory proposed that people have a gene that makes us (them) selfish (discriptively called "the selfish gene"). it's survival benefit stems from putting ones own survival above family & friends during hard times. My arguement against it is that it would have to develop and become widespread within about 5000 years, (which is improbable) the reason being that a low density human population (> 3000 BC) lives in tribal groups where selfishness is actively culled. hoarding food from family members is unthinkable because the group has a better chance of survival than individuals (more hands and eyes to locate food & shelter). In that world, Loners are seen as witches that cause bad luck. A higher density population, like in towns big enough that you don't know everybody, provides a breeding environment for loners from a sense of isolation in the crowd, a lack of identity, & various neurosis and psychosis that "justify" selfishness. (yea witches & vampires there abound).

So yeah, sure there's a lot of selfish people around, but they still lack genetic viability, in fact any survival traits would be associated with the lack of a selfish gene.

the problem with theories & axioms, (etc.) is that they're all in ones head. to whit: there's no actual "conflict" in the real world. Floods, fires, giant meteor impacts, tsunamis, brain eating zombie invasions, species exterminatiions are all threats to the individual, but proof that the world is constantly self regulating.

In "real world" perfection there is a flawless piece of software (somewhere), (32 bit clean! according to the "rules of software"). It's not an independant entity however, because "the perfect software", like programs that compile it and the operating platform it runs on, and all the chips and hardware that usher electrons around to make the screen glow w/ the right pattern, are all based on theoretical models that seem to behave in a predictable way, until it self regulates or a zombie eats the observers brain. In the latter case, the experiment normally ceases because the observation discontinues. However, recent scientific advances (Nonlocality of a Single Particle Demonstrated Without Objections) have proven that a tree falling in the forest will make noise even if no one hears it, or to extrapolate slightly further: Zombie interference with an observation does not nullify the result, or (quite a bit further) "Rock & Roll will never die", or (the rational conclusion) "Convert to Zombiism Before it's Too Late".

OK to be honest here, this is mostly just anti-bullshit bullshit, the point here is that the stuff outside your head works fine on it's own mainly because it's uncontrollable & unknowable, (like God?), except like in abstractions. The problem is what goes on inside, (like drawing universal conclusions from limited data, kin you believe it?). Peoples brains aren't designed to work like computers, because computers don't have amigdulas and a dozen hormonal overrides (like fight or flight, shop or sleep). The most outstanding result is that people alter their environment to make themselves look good to OTHER PEOPLE, with NO regard for what it costs the world. like chain sawing the rain forests, and strip mining mountains, so they can get bling and the most buff sex (w/ a smug sneer). The cost to the world is definitely relative to how people effect people.

Real IN YOUR FACE Athiests will appreciate this link: Maggot Punks. I just discovered them by following links through my website stats & Myspace, wondering why I had so many hits to this photo (so I put an ad at the bottom):

They warms th' cockles o'me heart, but let me qualify that a little, I totally agree that hypocrites should be called out, on the other hand though, it's a waste of time to get hormonal on that same level. It just further polarizes the situation, & that's no solution, lookit GW.

The unspeakably unclean in the above picture is the larva of a kind of fly (Tachinid) that eats caterpillars. Unlike some carnivorous flies that eat dead stuff, these don't wait for the caterpillar to expire. They reproduce like The Alien using a live host, and burst forth from their chest w/ a defiant look before scurrying off to pupate & search for food.

Releases of Beneficial Organisms in the United States and Territories-1992. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous publication No.1505, 529 pp.
"Well over 20 million individuals of at least 151 species of insect and mite parasites and predators, almost exclusively of foreign origin, were released against at least 79 insect and mite pests, also predominantly introduced species, in the United States and its Territories in 1982. "... Aliens are among us.

Here's a question, what's ubiquitous, every culture claims it defines them as a people (it's religion, duh, but): What is it?

Here's an answer: people talk to themselves internally, they read cereal boxes & online blogs so that their "consciousness" will have something to do. Internal talking reinforces the personal world. "I shot 15 hoops straight today!" not bad y'know, but so what? It's important because it gives one a social context, aids security and prevents isolation. Ok, but who cares? Exactly the point, somebody has to care, so that somebody takes place in ones head, they have a persona that's defined by people we know, (or read about, or see on tv, etc.)

Ok, now we're inside your head, both of us, or maybe it's mine (looks like my junk. You got this stuff too?)

The thing that Lovers, Charlatans, Priests, Politicians, and sugar Placebos all have in common is they affect a part of a persons brain associated with how one feels about themselves. In order to do that, there must be a willingness to believe & trust, and they must know what to expect. It's not a fake effect, the effect is real, the rational is false. Treat someone like a King & they'll grow to act like one, treat them like a fool & they'll grow to act that way too. Promise them honor & security forever & they usually consider it seriously because it tweaks that little part of their brain. If negative odds are too obvious, well, there's other ways to appeal: like The Relative Situation, which depends on context "sure things are ok, but they could be better, & think how much worse it could be if... bla bla" The hook is either set or not depending on the prep work.

You can pick your demise by gender. Gun rights are symbolic of a male dominated society, how do women ever cope? Same as ever, if its not guns, its some other kind of male dominated social destructiveness (gambling, smoking, drinking, drug dealing, porn) it's male, all male, how come? Well, there's female destruction too, it's passive, things just fall apart. If you get mugged & machine-gunned, that's male (like Shiva the destroyer). But if you get lost in the desert, perish of ennui & consumed by vermin, that's Kali "Nail-Cakes", goddess of death.

Traditional (or any other kind) of gods all appear to have traits of organic life forms, they're crafty & act just like people! Do they do that on purpose or does it just seem that way? Is it fair for people to anthropomorphize the forces of the universe as if though they were just invisible mortals? (NO, IT's NOT FAIR!) As a god I object to that kind of degradation! Gods can do anything & we can make up the rules as we go along. GW Tush thinks he enjoys my favor but, he's never bothered to approach me even once, he ignores the rational advisors I put at his disposal & I certainly never speak to him. I can't believe the hubris of that man. So that you all know that I am the supreme being, I shall visit him with boils and pestilence, & cause him to be a toy for the amusement of Nail-Cakes, my chick.

Here's a good post from the BBCs' Newsnight: The God Delusion.

For the benefit of all my devoted and desperate readers, who've been hanging on the edge of their seats for months to learn the result of how discovering god has reflected on my overall well being, I send my blessings and good news:

I lied.

The thing I thought was god in the back of my sock drawer turned out to be a mouse nest. When I attempted to communicate with the mouse, she ignored me. At first I took this as additional proof, but when my gut feeling told me to invade a 3rd world country that didn't have oil, I knew it was the work of Satan. So I tossed the nest & all in a blender. Ok, I didn't, I lied again. Life's hard when you're a heathen & a blasphemer, always avoiding good, doing evil, & coveting your neighbors ass (actually the guy's crazy & thoroughly unappealing. But see, that's what makes it hard).

Oh wow though, Pam's ass was gorgeous when she lived over there. She made Brazillian beach bunnies look like dumpy farm girls. But I was trying to be a citizen, since she was married & had a daughter. Her husband was busted & locked up for dealing dope & she made it plain to me she was lonesome for company. Then he got out on parole & sincerely believed I'd been messing with her (probably because Pam needed some kind of leverage with him so she implied I had). He beat her up & made her pregnant & miserable, so she stayed drunk most of the time. Chelsey was the new baby, she was a sweetheart, but had an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder because of the fetal alcohol before she was born. Chelsey'd do risky things like running along the top of the picket fence & climb up on the corrugated plastic roof of the porch to hang out with the cats whenever she got upset, because heavy adults couldn't go out there to catch her, and she liked the cats better anyway. By the time she was 4, she'd go hunting with them too. Pam finally got divorced but lost custody because of her history of dope & drinking. So without mom around, dad made kiddy porn videos of his 12 yr old older daughter (who took after Pam) & her friends in junior high cheerleaders. He tried to sell the stuff, but the buyer turned him in. The family fell apart. Grandma took Chelsey & moved to Italy. Pam moved in with her Xs' dad. The older daughter & her friend were both put in foster homes. I grandly imagine that I could have made a believable impression on ol' dad (or got killed), if I HAD kept company with Pam, but I also had a daughter & recent breakup too & I didn't want to make things worse for MY kid. And ol' dad had a pistol that once belonged to Charlie Manson & he was proud of it, more reason not to get too involved. Except for Pams beautiful tush, that whole episode was a whirlpool of chain saws. Wonder what god was doing then? Oh it's probably none of our business.

Catch 23: every catch has a catch.
OK Look: here's what god was doing then. Since, in fact, god's the unifying principle behind everything you DON'T know: god was furiously twiddling his hormones & smirking! Well no, that's only what it looked like he was doing, Actually he was casting around desperately to make sense of nonsense & trying to decide where to go with it. He'd only have that direction if an observer with an opinion is present. An opinion would require an assessment of the facts. You see this is rapidly spinning out of gods control. He morphs from everything you DON'T know to only those things you do. So "Poof" you read the above facts, what are the critical elements? suffering, hormones, attraction, revulsion, rightous voyeurism. But it doesn't have any meaning in it'self, because without people, god is nonsense. Furthermore, gods' existance violates his own definition, how can there be a mystical unifying reality that's unknown? (If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you cheap. In fact, forget the bridge: just send me all your money because you must). What's really causing the wonder of the universe is the potential in the wild, like Pams beautiful butt, forever unknowable & meaningless, (except for the hormones, eh?).

Pop died today at about 1:40 pm. He was 97. He broke his hip about a month or 5 weeks ago & got pneumonia. I could have kept him in the hospital but he would have been on life support and he didn't want that. So I let them move him into a convalescent hospital. His hip healed but he stopped eating. The pneumonia came back. When I came in, he was breathing hard, the nurse said "he's dying, this is the way it starts with pneumonia". I sat beside him while his lungs filled up. My brothers were flying in airplanes over the pacific to be here. He gasped a few times & died. The nurse came up and held a stethoscope against his chest and looked at the clock. She was patronizing & only slightly vulturene, (as opposed to the hospice workers who are actually repulsive) and offered condolences. I said "thank you", but meant "go away". I sat beside him for awhile & a physical therapist came in & said to Pop in a loud jolly voice : Hello Mr. Cornelius, How are you feeling today?" I said "he's gone", The therapist looked at me then at pop & then said "I'm sorry" and left. I held Pops' hand & said "go hunting pop, & bring home some bacon". It's something he always said before he'd leave to go hunting when I was a kid.

Then I took my dog for a walk in Doyle park where he played with some other dogs in a fenced in area for dogs that they close off in the winter so it won't get muddy, but people lift the gate and go in any way. There was a rotwieller and a brindle sausage shaped mutt. My dog has no social graces and he dumped in the middle of the play yard. People put plastic bags on the fence for just such occasions, & I used one.

Then we drove back to the convalescent hospital and retrieved Pops' things (clothes, shoes, razor, hearing aid). My older brother sent a bouquet from Hawaii, I put it all in a plastic bag & put that on the passengers seat of my car. I drove back to moms' apartment, she was asleep so I worked on my computer for an hour sending out emails to family, till she woke up & I told her. She'd been expecting it for awhile so she didn't break up. I verified that she had plenty to live on and the car was running (though she hasn't driven for 8 years & has no license).

Ok I'm sorry to bum everybody, but I just found God (in the back of the sock drawer). I was just imagining what it would take to get away with all the stuff that gets blamed on God. (wouldn't be the devil because that's still the same thing). It has to include both, not good, not evil, not even indifference because god's not aware, (at least there's no evidence that God has awareness, that doesn't come through the filter of someone with their own motive. that's why it's exasperating to reason with the sucker). So god's indifferent & still has some kind of form or weird utility, & be a default "reason" for everything. (God invented daughters so they could wash the car)? I don't think so. It's more like this:

See, whatever it is has to be coherent & not contradictory, so just skip all the stuff that is, like science, politics, religion, truth, lies & all. What's left? Well, the physical world, like outside your head. but it's meaning & utility are entirely inside your head. So, are you God? shure that fits (sort of). wait there's more!

The classical form of prayer is beseeching someone invisible for favors, (you know the drill) because it's deserved. ok? so why's that a recognizable condition for God. (hint: it helps the definition) Nobody says "oh great God: give me cannibalism, incest & kiddy porn because I deserve it". No, see it's a kind of social thing, God is. God doesn't have secrets or a plan, God IS a plan, what you see is what you get: a universal mechanism, which helps the people survive. God says "Be good & Do right, & thou shall/shant & so on & I'll reward thee with all the riches of the earth plus free upgrades. Wild gods might do the same thing, but they do that only as people see them. Like whatever pushes the planets & cares for fuzzy animals (with big brown eyes like bunnies & aging wolverines). Those gods only attain meaning & existence through the perception of people, but like a tree falling in the forest, those gods also have their own worlds that people may never know. Of course a person could pray to those gods (or one cooked up by fundamentalists to serve some immediate folly) for ones cannibalism, incest & kiddy porn, but that's like plugging part of that world & it into the people, so it would have to have some kind of meaning for the people world too, to be recognizable. For example when you answer the door with blood up to your elbows & all you have is a flippant excuse ("Hey God said it was ok!"): it might not be the same meaning. So our first labor for God isn't to create light, it's to homogenize society.

Another point of definition says god'll punish you (for evil thoughts, etc.). looks like he's back to square one, except If you consider that God IS a plan, instead of having one, the plan is that stuff that breaks down society, ultimately comes back on the person that perpetrates the deed (just like flies on poop or Karma on Dubya!). Not that any of that stuff is intrinsically destructive to the perp, because there are cultures in the world today that consider almost anything to be acceptable behavior somehow, just as there are those that don't. But because we get along SO well with each other, legal stuff provides employment for someone to go around and insure that people who continue to eat up the neighbors are held responsible for whatever's wrong with it. Now all those guys that make their living selling God finally have something worthwhile to promote, like social tolerance, and liberal bias, so predators can have another harvest in a few years when the next peace matures. And the legal people employed to see that everything is legal will surely constrain themselves so that harmless & non-violent people aren't busted for the security of the legals' own employment because that's ultimately bad for society.

So: how come some societies COMMIT SIN & get away with it & some don't? Well heck! it's natural selection in action. Like all those societies that ate up their kids, pretty soon ran out of people. The Shakers (famously good, kind, pious, wholesome, etcetera), ran out of people & became extinct because they were celibate. Some societies even thrive on WAR, probably because they don't run up a 10 trillion dollar debt on the say-so of their pin headed commander in chief. (Note: all those that did, had to eat the leader to avoid starvation.... Just a thought).

OK now here's gods will: (I God, being of sound mind & body, record herewith my will & testament...) Gods will is what someone decided was the solution for social misfits: make nonconformity so unpleasant that people won't want to go there. (actually it was some bureaucrats plan and not Gods), and it doesn't work (see footnote 1). Writing down all the possible ways a person might disrupt society (& disobey God), makes for a predictable future, so long as the code is relevant. Then maybe someone decides that the letter of the law is more profitable than the spirit (I love that comparison, it could mean anything), so the codified plan becomes a tool for exploitation & is no longer Gods plan. a couple of examples are: the Statutes of Negritude (legal reasons why white people could exploit blacks, cir. 1650-1860), & 3 strike laws applied to nonviolent offenders (reasons why rich people may exclude marijuana users from society, cir. 1980-present). Sure if you agree with those laws then they're relevant, ie.: The cranial measurements of the heads of the colored races predisposes them to servitude, and, Marijuana makes you crazy. The point here is that nobody can write a perfect law & nobody can define God for the same reason. (see footnote 1)

1: Because right & wrong are subjective & dynamic, while laws and judges are static and objective, Law & Gods definition try to keep the world from changing, but without constant feedback and adaptation, it's inherently futile. Ideally, a democracy provides as much feedback as it needs, (the price of freedom is constant vigilance), but of course depends on the social honesty of it's representatives & poll takers (there's always a catch).

Here's another post copied off the web (NY Times). It describes an old religious scam that has been honed & refined by the republican right, and fed back with more "authority" than ever. At the bottom I placed a link to one of the groups who want to impeach Bush, please sign their petition.

Op-Ed Columnist
Design for Confusion

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 5, 2005

I'd like to nominate Irving Kristol, the neoconservative former editor of The Public Interest, as the father of "intelligent design." No, he didn't play any role in developing the doctrine. But he is the father of the political strategy that lies behind the intelligent design movement - a strategy that has been used with great success by the economic right and has now been adopted by the religious right.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Related More Columns by Paul Krugman

Forum: Paul Krugman's Columns

Back in 1978 Mr. Kristol urged corporations to make "philanthropic contributions to scholars and institutions who are likely to advocate preservation of a strong private sector." That was delicately worded, but the clear implication was that corporations that didn't like the results of academic research, however valid, should support people willing to say something more to their liking.

Mr. Kristol led by example, using The Public Interest to promote supply-side economics, a doctrine whose central claim - that tax cuts have such miraculous positive effects on the economy that they pay for themselves - has never been backed by evidence. He would later concede, or perhaps boast, that he had a "cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit."

"Political effectiveness was the priority," he wrote in 1995, "not the accounting deficiencies of government."

Corporations followed his lead, pouring a steady stream of money into think tanks that created a sort of parallel intellectual universe, a world of "scholars" whose careers are based on toeing an ideological line, rather than on doing research that stands up to scrutiny by their peers.

You might have thought that a strategy of creating doubt about inconvenient research results could work only in soft fields like economics. But it turns out that the strategy works equally well when deployed against the hard sciences.

The most spectacular example is the campaign to discredit research on global warming. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, many people have the impression that the issue is still unresolved. This impression reflects the assiduous work of conservative think tanks, which produce and promote skeptical reports that look like peer-reviewed research, but aren't. And behind it all lies lavish financing from the energy industry, especially ExxonMobil.

There are several reasons why fake research is so effective. One is that nonscientists sometimes find it hard to tell the difference between research and advocacy - if it's got numbers and charts in it, doesn't that make it science?

Even when reporters do know the difference, the conventions of he-said-she-said journalism get in the way of conveying that knowledge to readers. I once joked that if President Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headlines of news articles would read, "Opinions Differ on Shape of the Earth." The headlines on many articles about the intelligent design controversy come pretty close.

Finally, the self-policing nature of science - scientific truth is determined by peer review, not public opinion - can be exploited by skilled purveyors of cultural resentment. Do virtually all biologists agree that Darwin was right? Well, that just shows that they're elitists who think they're smarter than the rest of us.

Which brings us, finally, to intelligent design. Some of America's most powerful politicians have a deep hatred for Darwinism. Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, blamed the theory of evolution for the Columbine school shootings. But sheer political power hasn't been enough to get creationism into the school curriculum. The theory of evolution has overwhelming scientific support, and the country isn't ready - yet - to teach religious doctrine in public schools.

But what if creationists do to evolutionary theory what corporate interests did to global warming: create a widespread impression that the scientific consensus has shaky foundations?

Creationists failed when they pretended to be engaged in science, not religious indoctrination: "creation science" was too crude to fool anyone. But intelligent design, which spreads doubt about evolution without being too overtly religious, may succeed where creation science failed. Check this example (it's real): "The Final Theory"

The important thing to remember is that like supply-side economics or global-warming skepticism, intelligent design doesn't have to attract significant support from actual researchers to be effective. All it has to do is create confusion, to make it seem as if there really is a controversy about the validity of evolutionary theory. That, together with the political muscle of the religious right, may be enough to start a process that ends with banishing Darwin from the classroom.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com


Impeach Bush NOW.

It may be that this particular argument (see below: 1/15/2005) was just poorly presented, that another description would offer another conclusion, but this one presents the crucial dilemma: Why is it necessary to describe the indescribable? Well that's the question. The old 60s' Twilight Zone TV series (in B/W eh?) did a story about a neighborhood that went bonkers & started shooting each other when they decided unexplainable stuff was caused by Aliens or Russians trying to take over. It turns out it was Aliens in flying saucers trying to find out how people react to impossible events. Their conclusion was that we were all unstable but ripe for invasion (if they could think up any reason to do it (this was when GW was like 16)), because our psyche requires that we deny half of our awareness. Carlos Castaneda's friend Don Juan describes everything we know as being a thing called the Tonal & everything we don't know (everything else) as a thing called the Nagual. The Tonal is made of conventions and knowledge. The Nagual is indescribable and is the media of sorcerers (also of charlatans and demagogues)

The intelligent design movement essentially says that the unknown is a "force" which is attributable to God.
The Non believer says if it's real, show me?
The Believer says what you don't know is god, so you can't argue.

So: is a vacuum actually a force? sure, metaphorically speaking, just like darkness is light.

My opinion is that animals, and humans especially (because we depend on thinking so much) are stuck with an intellectual blind spot: if it doesn't have a name, it doesn't exist, and if it does have a name, then it has to exist: GOD. So for all practical purposes, God is a catchall to explain a certain vacuum in the human brain. Dogs run away when they don't understand & that's a very realistic and pragmatic reaction. Fundamentalists however fall down & beg forgiveness from earthquakes & volcanos, or blame what they don't understand on unexplainable designs of a projected social superior. (see below: November 28, 2002) Then if they survive, it's proof that god accepts their homage, & if they get covered up with lava, no one ever hears about it. Because life's complexity can’t be explained without a supernatural creator, eh? Sez professional evangelical business persons.

Here's a post I had to copy because it'll be replaced with other topics shortly on his site at
The Schwartzreport

Genital Theology and the Quest for Pelvic Orthodoxy
Stephan A. Schwartz, Editor

Unless you live in some very remote portion of the earth over these past weeks the death of one Pope and the coronation of another, has exposed you to a seemingly endless discussion about the Roman Catholic Church and what is likely to happen with Benedict XVI at the helm. At the same time the American Religious Right, which seems to have taken control of the Republican Party has, itself, been focusing intensely on many of these same issues, and making a politician's position on them a litmus test for their support, which has skewed the national political process in profound ways. Based on what we view and read the inner spiritual experience once considered the well-spring of Judaeo-Christian thought has been replaced by Genital Theology.

A preponderant number of the public statements made in the name of religion actually deal with sexuality: Adultery, pre-marital sex, abortion, homosexuality, priestly chastity; this is the stuff of the religion pages of almost any newspaper. Conclaves of American bishops, rabbis or pastors routinely discuss masturbation and pre-martial sex, but it is almost inconceivable to imagine them discussing angels or individual transcendental experiences such as those that created their religions in the first place. Issues of the groin dominate almost all so-called religious discussions, and taken together they comprise a quest for pelvic orthodoxy.

The use of religion to regulate sexuality is not new. What is different is the self-righteous linkage of fundamentalist Christianity and patriotism. During the administration of John Adams, the second President of the United States, the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Tripoli which had been negotiated by American diplomat Joel Barlow during Washington's administration. Article XI of the treaty said, "The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."

James Madison, the fourth President, and the father of the Constitution is on record saying, "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise. He wrote, "During almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride, indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both superstition, bigotry and persecution."

It would be correct to say that the founders were Deists. They believed in a "guiding intelligence or principle." Like the third President, Thomas Jefferson, they felt, "The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained." America's Christianity, then, as now, when the Religious Right frames everything in terms of Jesus and Christian faith, when their arguments are carefully considered are actually arguing about culture not spirit.

This failure to address spiritual needs and the placement of tribalizing judgments, above all other considerations, is having an effect on democracy in America. According to a survey conducted by the University of Chicago's, National Opinion Research Center as long ago as 1984, 43 per cent, or 101 million men and women have had an "unusual spiritual experience." This is a much larger group than the "born agains" alone. It is even larger than the entire church going population. And of that more than 100 million, 68 million men and women, 29 per cent of the total population, believe they have received a "spiritual vision." It is one reason the Consciousness (New Age) Movement, that often underground river that has flowed through American culture from Revolutionary Masonic presidents, to the 19th Century's Transcendentalists, to today's public shamans such as Deepok Chopra or Mary Ann Williamson has become so prominent in recent years. This dereliction from addressing spiritual experience has divided the country and is, I believe, at the core of the Red/Blue split. This abdication by religious leaders of their traditional role, has made psychiatrists, psychologists, mediums, and astrologers, the true priests of our culture, while our theologians and clergy have increasingly become political operatives.

The concept of god as an evolutionary dead end.

Some say god created us because he was lonesome, like he needed company

ok here's God. he's either us or not, whatever. Let's assume He created us and not vice versa. God existed first so He has to be perceived on a scale of time, which may be called His Great Plan. Plans require a purpose/goal. The rapture perhaps, but then what?. The rapture is a development of his son's advocates, maybe not bad, but NOT God The Original and wasteful in the writers opinion, because the chosen enter heaven in their physical form, and the rest of the physical world is discarded (where does it go?). If God gets angry because humanity rejects his plan for a perfect world, then He must put some value on it. Heck, what's this God the Son revisionism anyway, if there's one god, he needs to be updated more plausibly. Ok, I'm digressing, this is just hypothesis anyway, the main point here is that there's a time scale & a goal (and it looks suspiciously like a perception of those who live in a time-space continuum ie: not-god).

Since God has no beginning & no end, & He can look at the future like we look at the past, He should have an advantage in the evolution of events. Apparently He chooses not to use it, possibly because He's inscrutable and mysterious, (or perhaps we're just idiots). This is serious: Why not use the advantage of total consciousness?
I'll wait while you ponder & then present my fecklessly self serving opinion/answer.
.....

Ok, it's because planning to avoid past mistakes increases entropy instead of reducing it because there are fewer evolutionary options. (like crop mono-culture) "nay nay" you say "because God isn't bound by the laws of thermodynamics!" Maybe, but so far we don't have that evidence, and we do have evidence that everything He created is. Could it be that God is made up as we go along, designed solely to refute opposition to His existence? well duh! How about a self serving waste of time. (not me, Him) Well, ok, if one makes a living from selling God, it's not a real waste of time.

So here's the given:
1) God exists and he knows what he's doing.
2) His Plan revolves around humanity and is subject to the laws of thermodynamics.
3) Planned evolution reduces options thus increases entropy, in humanity's case resulting in the natural disintegration of the universe because His Plan depends on humanity and not the universe.
4) God expects humanity to become obsolete because otherwise the universe has no physical limit.

For a being that knows how it will come out, this seems like an exercise in futility. More likely, it's a social device promoted by people who have serious doubts on how it will come out, to insure their own personal, and relatively temporary, safety by planning to abandon this world of contradiction and hemorrhoids, and get raptured into dreamland.

These are the people that say "we'll all meet there in the great by & by", & require faith as a per-requisite. Well, when one looks at the option of eternal, gloom &/or wandering lost spirits, meeting with friends in the hereafter isn't such a bad idea.

So what would one (you, me, or anybody) do if you knew how things would turn out? What would ones outlook on life be like?

Ok, my guess is that either it comes easily, or one ha s to work at it. I can't really imagine God working at it because while I've never created a universe or anything, work is a burden by definition, & it seems that if it's done for ones self, it must be enjoyable. The basic question as a mortal is: "Is this s action fatal & are things ok for now?" But for God, food & shelter isn't a problem because he can extenuate the situation to his best advantage & dwelling on mortality is a wet blanket. But since God's immortal, his main problem would be what to do with himself. They (Hindus) say Shiva once incarnated himself as a pig because he was bored, but I think the concept of awareness that story relates, comes from a finite perspective, I mean given all the possibilities of an infinite universe, why create a finite existence? did it just pop into Gods head one day "That's it! No more total awareness! I'll create sin & suffering!" What the heck for?? Probably as punishment, right? One slowly perceives a realization that maybe God's missing a few marbles. Maybe he's been alone so long that he's cracked up (14 billion years + whatever he did before the big bang) (smirk). So: It's the duty of humanity to kick his loony butt back in shape.

Aaah! But see, I'm digressing again.

The main point of this post is that if we assume god exists, even for the purposes of argument, then all options depend on that assumption. A person who assumes the existence of god, reading this (above) about the advantage of total consciousness, will use it to validate their belief (see! that's why god doesn't use the advantage of foresight!).

But a person who doesn't assume god's existence will use the same argument to validate their assumption. (see! if god exists and uses the advantage of foresight, he'd have to also plan for the extinction of himself and everything, which is suicidal, pointless, & sort of un-godlike).

The believers have the advantage because the whole point assumes there's something here to argue about, and a negative (meaning there isn't) can't be proven.

My opinion is that god's a conceptual name for the center of the herd. everything else has to be seen in relation to it. The biggest threat to an individual is banishment, excommunication, solitary. “Cast out & cut off from gods presence”. More even than death & torture, there’s stories of people who are given a choice & choose banishment, but return to their people in a few weeks or years to be executed. Socrates knew he would be useless without his people. Of course we never hear about the ones that make it to Shangra-la, because (1) nobody ever sees them again, (2) it would embarrass the king.

Here's an interesting link: http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/. It's interesting the way god is taken for granted in 99.9% of societies. I think there's a hormonal thing that happens when a social creature is ex cluded from it's herd.They become prone to diseases & stress that changes their scent which makes them into food for predators. Us at the top of the food chain have our own predators in the form of cops, gangs, republicans, lawyers, rip-offs or others who make their living off the "weak". Homeless people do smell funny y'know, & they're just scum anyhow.