When you give up believing science you end up with snake-oil salesman like this fraud trying to take people for a ride. This guy is making a fortune out of gullible people.
To me this guy is a joke. He has mansions, airplanes and luxury cars.
Today’s Music to keep me NSae in Isolation – Christy Moore
Christy is another of those singer/songwriters who says something in his songs. I like music with depth and meaning – songs of passion.
Today I’ll be playing Christy Moore:
Religion – is there a God??
Religion is a hot potato. Trying to look objectively at it is extremely difficult. We are born into cultures steeped in religious dogma. It is a process of brainwashing that is impossible to escape.
Freud said religion was a mass psychosis. I agree with him.
Is there any evidence of a supernatural being? None that I have seen or heard.
We live in an amazing universe. It is mind-boggling. But does that necessary infer an intelligence behind it? I say no.
We have an amazing brain that provides us with consciousness. Does that infer a god? I say no.
Religions came out of the Stone-Age with their costumes, rituals and customs – often racist, intolerant and misogynistic. I believe they are all creations of man.
We love ritual and pageant. We find it fulfilling. We love answers to problems. There are none bigger than life and the universe. We fear death. We are eager to clutch at straws that say this life isn’t all there is. But is there evidence for anything – a future life, a god creator? No, not really. Yet we manufacture ghosts, angels and heaven. We like to think of our loved ones and ourselves living forever, reunited. It is reassuring.
Looking, as a biologist at our bodies, they are not miracles. They are riddled with flaws and ‘design’ faults. We could easily design something far superior.
We believe tales from individuals up mountains, in caves and in the wilderness from people who claim to have spoken to god. But really, if someone made those claims today they would be ridiculed. Why does god choose not to speak to us all? Why only to solitary individuals?
Perhaps, because there is no god? Perhaps many people ‘hear voices’?
Has religion done much good? The history of religion has been the tale of a struggle for power with much persecution, intolerance, hatred, war and violence.
On the positive side, it has produced much succour and comfort for the bereaved and reduced anxiety over death. It has provided help and comfort for those in need. Many religious people have done a lot of good. But is it a false hope, based on a false premise?
Does the bad outweigh the good? I think it does.
As religions developed in the age of science, they have changed. For example, the Catholic Church believed that Heaven was above and hell below. That the earth was the centre of the universe and that the stars were pinpricks through which the light of heaven showed through. They tortured and burnt people who disagreed.
As science demonstrated that the earth was not the centre, that stars were suns, that there was no heaven in the sky or hell below, they changed their dogma. It clearly demonstrates to me that they do not know what they are talking about.
Is this blasphemous? Or is it possible to have an intelligent discussion about religion?
Now spirituality – that’s something else altogether!!
The Enlightenment – An overview
The Enlightenment – An overview
The Enlightenment came about in the 18th century and freed Western civilisation from the stranglehold of religious fundamentalism. It enabled all the progress we now take for granted.
Prior to this time there was a type of extreme fundamentalism that was akin to ISIS. It was illegal to oppose Christian religious belief. Europe was a theocracy. The word of god was the only rule. Heretics, or those the Church/establishment deemed to be heretic could be tortured to death to save their souls. All methods of torture were devised and deployed including the most barbaric that can be imagined.
To even publish the Bible in English was an offence punishable by death. The Church wanted the power and that resided with the clergy. It was not right for ordinary people to have access to the teachings; they could misinterpret the meaning.
It was a regular event to have blasphemers, witches and heretics publicly burnt to death. Science and rationalism were not permitted.
What is obvious is that all this was much more to do with power than religion.
In the 1620s there was a scientific revolution which brought about a wave of rationalism and doubt. The theological certainties of flat earth, earth at the centre of creation and even man in god’s image were brought into question.
In the 18th Century philosophers such as Kant developed the philosophy of rationalism. This grew among the intellectual classes and led to a movement to create a society based on reason. This led to the separation of religion from politics and the formation of a secular culture.
Secular politics was based on tolerance and reason.
The philosopher Locke the radical idea that government should be through the consent of the people and not the imposition of religious dogma.
This led to a flourishing of the Arts and Science which created the greatest impetus of social development in the history of the world. The West flourished.
The enlightenment led to the ethos of the French Revolution – Equality, Liberty and Fraternity.
It separated the state from religion.
It led to the American revolution and the enshrined doctrine of freedom, religious freedom and individuality.
It has enabled the West to create democracy, pluralism, tolerance, freedom, science, liberalisation, the arts and a diverse and vital culture.
If we had not had an enlightenment and reformation we would still be in medieval costume burning Catholics, Muslims and anyone who was different in our public squares.
Long Live the Enlightenment! Something worth fighting for!
Anecdote – Buddha and god
Anecdote – Buddha and god
Buddha and god
As an antitheist I do not believe there is a god, certainly not one who has created man in his own image or who is concerned with the lives of men. I see no evidence of the universe having been created by some super being; neither do I see evidence of intelligent design around me. If man is made by divine hands then they are clumsy hands indeed. I myself can think of many great improvements to the human form – perfection it isn’t. No. The more I learn the less I am convinced. What I see is religion of all types constructed by man.
Yet I do perceive the possibility of some mystical force at work, some force present in sunsets, rocks, trees and majestic views that I would call ‘wonder and awe’. I do also sense a force at work within the psychology of people creating synchronicity. I, much to Andrew’s disgust, refer to this as the prevailing zeitgeist. I tend to think that this mental emanation will at some point be recognised by science. But maybe I am wrong. Science is in its infancy. It has much to discover. The field of consciousness and psychology is too new to have yielded all its secrets. The future will likely reveal a lot more.
Even as a young man, when I was a spiritual zealot, eager to follow in Kerouac and Ginsberg’s wake, to gain satori and see the universe through the eyes of Zen, I was sceptical of god and derisory of the god of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. His many faces seemed absurd.
I was greatly moved by a tale told to me by a Thai monk called Vorosak Candimitto. As a young man, besotted with Kerouac and Ginsberg, I was on a personal exploration into spirituality, the mind, mysticism and the void. I tried meditation and tried to still my mind to discover that truth within. I enjoyed it but soon moved on. Eastern meditation seemed inappropriate to the life I was leading. I wanted instant nirvana or nothing. That’s Western mentality for you. As for religion and god – this is what Vorosak told me: –
‘One day the Buddha was sitting with a number of learned men. One asked of him:
‘Is there a god?’
The Buddha thought hard before replying.
‘If you were shot with an arrow which had pierced your side, before having the arrow removed by a physician and the wound treated, would you first enquire who had fired the arrow? To what family did he belong? To what caste? Where did they come from? How many members did the family have? From what trees were the bow and arrow fashioned? From what animal were the guts for the bowstring created? Where the metal for the tip had been mined? Who had shaped the tip? From what bird had the feathers for the flights been plucked and who had manufactured them? Likewise the glue to hold them secure?’
The Buddha looked at the wise man intently.
‘Before you have the answers to your questions you would be dead.’
I liked that parable.
At the end of the days it is not about what you believe, how you’ve prayed, whether there is a god or not – it is about how you’ve lived your life, whether you’ve lived it to the maximum and whether you’ve been a force for good or evil.
No sane person would believe that any god would build a wondrous universe and then expect his creations to bore themselves to death in prayer and ritual, hate others and kill in his name. That is straight out of men’s warped minds (men – generic). If there is a god (which I do not believe for one minute) he would want you to live, love, build and enjoy.
So ISIS and all religious nutcases, indoctrinated fools and evangelical idiots can go hang – I’m for life.
My beliefs – Faith Schools – How about if we had Fascist and Communist Schools?
My beliefs – Faith Schools – How about if we had Fascist and Communist Schools?
I do not believe any faith schools, Sunday schools or madrassas should be allowed by law.
I believe indoctrinating children with religion or politics is an abuse. It should be a crime.
There are many religions and institutes that are dying to get their hands on our children and fill their heads with dogma. As the Jesuits used to say ‘give me a child until the age of seven and I’ll give you the man’. Unfortunately that is true. Once the impressionable minds have been poisoned with pernicious ideology they can never break free. They are stuck with it for life.
I believe children should be free to develop. They should not be indoctrinated.
I believe parents should bring up their children in a moral background with love, tolerance and equality as the basis. They should be taught to respect all people, races, faiths and creeds.
I believe schools should concern themselves with educating children, not indoctrinating them. Religion should be taught as a subject which covers all religions factually, never giving credibility or weight to one over another. I believe atheism and humanism should be part of that curriculum and given equal weight.
I believe assemblies should never be religious. They should be moral.
I believe that when a child reaches adulthood – I would suggest at sixteen- their brains are sufficiently developed for them to handle concepts as weighty as belief. Only then should they be subjected to religious belief.
I think that is people substituted politics for religion and we had communist or fascist schools set up to instil their dogma into our children we, as a society, might have a view. For me religion is even more pervasive and pernicious.
Poetry – The fanatic with no doubt – a poem against hatred.
The fanatic with no doubt
If it is written it must be true. It justifies everything.
All you have to do is select the correct texts.
With a little effort you can justify anything.
It is written down. It must be true.
It gives sanction to your every whim, every hidden urge.
It frees the psychotic to act.
How they flood to become involved, to get a slice of the action.
Public executions were ever most popular. The more agony the better.
There is a part of us that delights in the pain of others. If it wasn’t so we would not have invented bear-baiting, cock-fighting, badger-baiting, hare-coursing and snuff movies.
We are a cruel species.
We have a lot of civilizing to go through.
We find it so easy to justify our baser instincts. We wrap them up in religion, sport and entertainment.
What we love are screams and blood.
We have a lot to do to become more humane.
But if it is written it must be true!
I want a better world for my children. One that is less savage, less hating, more empathic and with much more love, peace and kindness.
Less fanatics would be a good start. Doubt is good.
The fanatic with no doubt
Line them up
Shoot them in the head.
Lie them down
Shoot them in the back.
Kneel them down
Saw through their throats.
Put them in a cage
Burn them.
If they are young
Rape them.
If they are old
Bury them alive.
There is no doubt.
It is written.
Opher 24.11.2015
Atheists have higher IQs and self esteem than religious people…
Atheists have higher IQs and self esteem than religious people…
Sounds reasonable to me! I had to smile when I read this post. I wonder if anybody might like to dispute it?
a recent study shows… Atheists tend to have a higher IQ and fewer self esteem issues..
Psychologists from the University of Rochester define intelligence as ‘ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience’. They go on to define religion as some sort of involvement in part or all of the aspects of a belief process.
A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. The association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious beliefs than religious behavior. 53 from the 63 studies displayed a ‘reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity’, in 10 of the 63 studies that relationship positive.
Three possible interpretations were discussed.
First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious…
View original post 138 more words
The sort of person I am! Part 1.
Anybody who checks out this blog will know exactly the sort of person I am. I hold nothing back. For me it has always been about communication. If you do not reveal your inner self you cannot really connect. It is compulsive and can be highly problematical. People do not like too much honesty.
I am an idealistic but not a perfectionist. I believe in making things better not perfect. I believe that we can and do improve things. History proves that.
I am green. I believe we have to care for this small planet. It’s a life-raft travelling through the hostile desert of space. It is fragile and only we humans are in a position to either act as guardians or destroyers of this paradise. It is in our hands. It is also in the balance. All the animals and plants are in our life-boat. We’re presently hacking through the bottom of the boat with an axe to get wood to keep warm.
I think that the biggest threat to the planet is the overpopulation crisis that is propelling the mass destruction of wilderness and plant and animal life. We are so prolific and stupid that we are wantonly destroying our own life support system.
I believe in people but they always let you down. They are capable of so much love, compassion, altruism and empathy but then they go and vote for Trump, May and Hitler, spend their lives watching crap on TV and buying Pop garbage.
I stand full square for equality, fairness, justice, peace, love, non-violence and political activation.
I stand for universal human rights in the face of religious fundamentalism, corporate greed, political extremism, tyranny and the on-going pressure to create blandness. I put my faith in the United Nations charter of Human Rights. I would like the world run by the United Nations and do away with the outmoded tribal nonsense of countries. That shouldn’t be too hard to achieve.
I love animals more than people. You know what their intent is. They are not so devious.
I believe in freedom but not too much. I do believe that we need laws. I do not believe in anarchy. Anarchy gives power to a small group of violent manipulators. I believe power should be restricted.
I do not believe most politicians have our interests at heart. Many mentally ill people seek power. Our board-rooms and political offices are full of power-seeking sociopaths, psychopaths and paranoid schizophrenics. Hence the world is being run for short term profit and long term loss. Hence we have warmongering, nuclear bombs, escalation, religious fanatics, political fanatics, genocide and assured mutual destruction.
I do not sanction endless expansion and economic growth. That is causing the destruction of the planet.
I do not think it is right that a tiny percentage of people own so much of the world’s wealth. These greedy people exert huge amounts of power to control, bribe, buy off and direct politicians. Hence the world’s mad dash towards apocalypse. I believe in fairness. It is not right that the world is ruin for the benefit of this small elite at the expense of billions. The Third World is deliberately kept in poverty and starvation because it suits the markets to do so. People make money out of it. They make money out of war. They make money out of misery. It needs to change. There is no reason on earth why everyone on this planet needs to starve or live in poverty. That is deliberately being engineered.
I do not believe that capitalism is the best model for creating peace, fairness and harmony. It promotes greed and selfishness. I do not see ‘trickle-down’ ever working.
I do not believe in God. I’ve seen all the arguments and I think it is all wishful thinking. There is a huge cultural indoctrination programme that ensnares children. Once they have been brain-washed they are stuck with it for life.
I believe there is a vicious, misogynistic culture present in the Arabic Judeo-Christian-Islamic philosophy has created misery, genocide, sexual repression, holocausts, Jihads, poverty, crusades and torture. Hinduism is just as bad. It is time we put it in the past with all the other superstition.
If prayer had any value we would not see all the highly religious cultures around the world living in the most abject poverty. If religion was such a strong moral force for good we would not see such cynical misuse of power by supposedly pious individuals, involved in slavery, exploitation of workers, cruelty, torture, inciting violence, organising crusades and jihads, planting bombs, sex abuse, flying planes into buildings and generally relishing their power.
Life is my religion. I have my eyes open to a wondrous universe. The world is full of beauty. Life is miraculous. I do not need a creator, after-life and mysticism to bolster that up. To live forever is a farcical notion in my opinion. The idea of Heaven and hell is obscene – eternal punishment or reward??? An idea born of humans, out of fear of death, that is flawed. I miss my loved ones but I wouldn’t even want to live with them forever.
Part two of the thoughts of Chairman Opher will follow when the urge grabs me.
Jesus is alright – it’s religion that is the problem.
I was recently accused, on another site, of having a down on Jesus and saying that Jesus was a hateful nut. I need to put that straight. I am an antitheist because I believe all religion is harmful. I believe it is manmade superstition that does a lot of harm to the psychology of humans and has been the cause of conflict, division, violence and war right down the ages.
I never said anywhere that Jesus was a nut and hateful. I say the religion of Christianity is a power game created by men (like all religions). I said the bible was the work of man written with all the baggage of the misogynistic, sexually repressed Arab culture that spawned it. I said that Jesus was an ordinary man who was the leader of a small Jewish cult. He was elevated into his current position for political reasons by actions of both St Paul and Constantine.
I have quite a lot of respect for some of the things Jesus was purported to have said (we’ll never know what he really said because it was all written down from word of mouth long after his death). What he was preaching was a compassionate, loving, caring brand of Judaism that must have been quite revolutionary for its time. Those were violent, highly conservative times. The culture was largely an oppressive theocracy. Anyone opposing it could find themselves stoned to death for blasphemy.
As such I contend that Jesus was a proto-socialist. I don’t think I find too much of what Jesus was purported to have said that I disagree with. I find tons about the Christian religion that I would disagree with.
I don’t think Jesus would have supported burning women in barrels of burning tar as witches or stoning people to death for adultery or blasphemy. I don’t think he would have been leading witch hunts, crusades against the Muslims or pogroms against the Jews. I don’t think he would have been torturing people in dungeons or burning them at the stake because they were Catholic. I don’t think Jesus would have supporting hoisting people up in cathedrals with weights dangling from them to dislocated all their joints or filling their guts with water and rolling logs over them to rupture their intestines. Or throwing captured enemy alive down a well to rot.
Or thousands of other jolly things the Christian Church has got up to over the years.
I don’t think Jesus would be walking around today with a gun or separating kids from their parents, or turning away refugees, or demonising Muslims, or supporting wars, bombing civilians, or supporting a capitalist system that benefits the top 1% and creates mass poverty, division and hatred.
I think Jesus would be supporting a more loving, compassionate attitude and a much fairer system because I believe Jesus was a proto-socialist.
I find a lot of powerful, wealthy Christians complete hypocrites who use their religion for personal gain.
It is religion that is the problem, not Jesus. I could be a follower of Jesus (as a wise man – and certainly not as a god) on social matters. What he said about sharing, giving to the poor, valuing all people and shunning violence fits well with my philosophy.
As for the rest of the man-made religion with all its violence, scaremongering and fear – I find that all too human and all too horrendous pie in the sky, control and power. It’s being used to prop up a corrupt system.
As such I don’t misrepresent Jesus. In my opinion he was a man, an ordinary man, who made a lot of sense on a number of things and was a product of his age – nothing more.
As for the god and spiritual side of things – well that is another, very lengthy debate.
But no – I don’t believe in any representation of anything I would call god – or any afterlife that you might recognise – and certainly not heaven and hell and some vindictive being who sadistically torturers non-believers. My belief in spirituality is more akin to atomic energy and a flow, a universal harmony, that runs through everything.
The worst things about religion are the brainwashing of kids and the stultifying affect of the psychological impact of the underlying threat. Believe in this – do this – and you will be given eternal life – failure to believe or belief in the wrong god – commit a sin and you will be doomed forever to burn in hell. What a terrible thing to load on a human being. Especially when, as with the Abrahamic tradition, you load the whole thing with the Arabic misogynistic, repressive attitudes towards sex. So everyone is a sinner. We must all feel guilt and beg forgiveness or we will burn. Our sexuality is dirty and god hates it.
I believe that is an attitude that has crippled our culture.