Does God Still Belong On Our Money?
An opinion piece by Skeptic Magazine’s Michael Shermer in the LA Times has stirred up lots of strong opinions amongst Angelenos. What do disinfonauts think?
The House voted 396-9 this week to reaffirm as the national motto the phrase “In God We Trust” and encouraged its pronouncement on public buildings and continued printing on the coin of the realm. The motto was made official in 1956 during the height of Cold War hysteria over godless communism and — in the words of Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove” — “Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”
As risible a reason as this was for knocking out a few bricks in the wall separating state and church, it was at least understandable in the context of the times. But today, what is the point of having this motto?…
How To Start A Dance Kult
Let’s start with what God is: the Father, Son & Holy Spirit.
The confusion about the nature of God starts with the idea God is separate from Existence. Also, there seems to be a tendency to treat the Father as God itself and the Son & Holy Spirit as a part of, but not equal to the Father. From these simple misunderstandings comes the logical paradoxes we’re all familiar with.
So here’s where we begin to clear things up. God is the single thing, but there are three aspects that make up the totality of God. Here’s the analogy: we take a piece of cheese. The cheese is one thing; however, there are aspects to the cheese that make up the whole thing: we have the shape, color & taste of the cheese. So where does the cheese end and its aspects begin? Well obviously that’s an impossible question.
So now the issue…
Christian Faith Requires Accepting Evolution
Jonathan Dudley writes on Huffington Post:
As someone raised evangelical, I realize anti-evolutionists believe they are defending the Christian tradition. But as a seminary graduate now training to be a medical scientist, I can say that, in reality, they’ve abandoned it.
In theory, if not always in practice, past Christian theologians valued science out of the belief that God created the world scientists study. Augustine castigated those who made the Bible teach bad science, John Calvin argued that Genesis reflects a commoner’s view of the physical world, and the Belgic confession likened scripture and nature to two books written by the same author.
These beliefs encouraged past Christians to accept the best science of their day, and these beliefs persisted even into the evangelical tradition. As Princeton Seminary’s Charles Hodge, widely considered the father of modern evangelical theology, put it in 1859: “Nature is as truly a revelation of God as the Bible;…
God’s Choice For President Of The United States
So who does God favor in the 2012 presidential race? LZ Granderson tries to unravel the competing claims of the candidates for CNN:
Vote for me or burn in hell.
I can’t imagine someone running for office saying that.
And yet four candidates — Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum — have said they had a sense that God was leading them to run. How far can we be from “vote for me or burn in hell” when it seems we’re already comfortable with “vote for me, I’ve been called by God”?
There was a time when if a candidate wanted to inject faith into a campaign he or she would be photographed going to church or shaking the Rev. Billy Graham’s hand…
Observations on Atheism
So the question has been raised to atheists: if life is the product of random chance and there is no divine authority and life is ultimately what you make it, then why do you care what people believe one way or another? Specifically in regard to a belief in God.
One response to the question is commentary on monotheism’s Apocalyptic “literalists” — people who sincerely want to see the world end and are actively trying to bring about its destruction.
Atheists see it as their moral duty to attack the root of such beliefs — which just happens to be belief in God. And it’s fair to say this is all part of the Atheistic consensus.
So atheists are literally trying to save the world … delusions of grandeur, anyone?
Time and time again I can’t help but notice the parallels between atheists and religious types: the bitter hostility towards anyone who doesn’t just choke…
God’s Approval Rating Falls To 52 Percent
We all know that the vast majority of Americans believe in God. However, that doesn’t mean they like him. The Atlantic Wire writes:
Public Policy Polling released the results of a survey today that included the question: “If God exists, do you approve or disapprove of its performance?” Fifty-two percent of the 928 respondents approve of the job the Almighty’s done while 9 percent disapprove. So about half the public isn’t too thrilled with the way God is handling, well, everything.
Seventy-one percent of the American public approves of God’s handling of the creation of the universe, 56 percent approve of (his? or her?) handling of the animal kingdom, and even 50 percent like the way he manages natural disasters.
What Does God Need With A Starship? (Video)
I don’t ask myself this enough. Thanks Jim. Happy Easter!
Praying To A Tree Trunk: Will The Tree Trunk Help?
One of the main things people pray for is peace. But there have already been trillions upon trillions of prayers for peace through the years, yet peace remains as elusive as mercury, as groups and factions and nations persist in warring viciously with each other, the violence continuing unabated.
Wouldn’t one think that people would finally come to the realization that either there’s no one up there listening to their prayers for peace, or if there is, he doesn’t have the power to stop the violence, or if he does, he has no desire to do so? That they may just as well be praying to a tree trunk?
I’ve been told there is some religious sect in the Himalayan Mountains that has been praying for peace, twenty-four hours a day in shifts, for more than five hundred years. Nuns of the Franciscan Sisters in La Crosse, Wisconsin, have been praying for…
Did Christianity Kill Marvin Gaye and Rozz Williams?
White magic failed to save the one, and black magic was of no avail to the other. From RockStarMartyr.net:
In private moments otherwise shrouded in darkness, Christians feel the presence of God looming over their shoulders. The Omniscient Eye bears witness to every messy indiscretion behind closed doors and probes dirty thoughts like a supernatural panty-raider.
In view of their popular images, Marvin Gaye and Rozz Williams seem as different as sly grins and slit wrists, but the camera overlooks their common heritage. They were both children of a church-dwelling God, and His relentless imposition of conscience drove them to the very edge of sanity — where they promptly jumped into the Abyss.
Both met their Maker on April 1st. No foolin’.
Marvin Gay Jr. grew up under the thumb of the “Hebrew Pentecostal” House of God denomination. His father, Marvin Gay Sr., was an ambitious preacher in the Washington DC congregation, and swung an iron fist…
Was ‘God’s Wife’ Edited Out Of The Bible?
TIME ponders the suppression of an omnipotent female counterpart to the male God solo-featured in Judeo-Christianity. Was this where the great Middle Eastern religions went wrong?
Some scholars say early versions of the Bible featured Asherah, a powerful fertility goddess who may have been God’s wife.
Research by Francesca Stavrakopoulou, a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter, unearthed clues to her identity, but good luck finding mention of her in the Bible. If Stavrakopoulou is right, heavy-handed male editors of the text all but removed her from the sacred book.
What remains of God’s purported other half are clues in ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in an ancient Canaanite coastal city, now in modern-day Syria. Inscriptions on pottery found in the Sinai desert also show Yahweh and Asherah were worshipped as a pair, and a passage in the Book of Kings mentions the goddess…
What’s So Great Up There in Heaven?
The main objective of the Christian scheme of life and death is to get to heaven after we die. Why? Because that’s where God is, and heaven without God would be like a sunny day without sunshine, an innate contradiction. Christians want to be with God because, they say, he is all-perfect, and eternity with him will be beyond the greatest happiness imaginable. But how many people stop to ask why this will be so.
Okay, so God is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Even greater. So what? What will this do for me? As they used to say years ago in my hometown of Italian, Slavic, and Nordic immigrants in northern Minnesota to measure the value of what one was doing, “Will it put a chicken on the table [to eat]?” How does God’s being so great and wonderful translate into our happiness being far greater than we could ever imagine if we are there with him? I don’t get it. So he’s incredible and magnificent and perfect and everything else, and I, along with millions of others, am by his side. Now what? Where do we go from there? I mean, what will we do in heaven besides worshiping the Lord?
All manner of pleasurable things have been envisioned by people through the years about heaven, the Disneyland of the Christian imagination…
God’s Name Is “Jealous”
The following is another chapter from my disinformation book, 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know: Volume 2, published in 2004. For more on me go to The Memory Hole or follow me @RussKick on Twitter.
There’s an old joke that says God’s name is Harold, as in: “Our Father, who art in Heaven, Harold be thy name…”
The strange thing is, that’s not too much off the mark, only the truth is even weirder. The Lord does indeed have a name, kind of like Andrew or Beth or José.
It’s right there in the Bible, at Exodus 34:14. Moses has trudged up Mount Sinai with a second pair of stone tablets, on which God will write the Ten Commandments. Moses and the Big G engage in some repartee, then God says:
“For thou shalt worship no other god: for the lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God”
This is straight out of the King James Version. God reveals…
NASA Completes 52-Year Mission To Find And Kill God (Video)
I have one question: Was James T. Kirk involved with this mission? Via the Onion:
After more than five decades of tireless work, brave exploration, and technological innovation aimed at a single objective, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced Wednesday that it had finally completed its mission to find and kill God.
“I am ecstatic to tell you all today that we have beheld the awesome visage of the supreme architect of the cosmos, and we have murdered Him,” jubilant administrator Charles Bolden said after being drenched with champagne by other celebrating NASA employees. “There have been innumerable setbacks, missteps, and hardships over the past 50 years, but we always stayed true to our ultimate goal and we never gave up.”
“We finally got the son of a bitch!” Bolden continued. “He’s dead! God is dead!”
Stephen Colbert and Harvard Philosophy Professor Sean D. Kelly Agree: Jesus is God
What’s to be done about our culture’s loss of a notion of what’s sacred? From the Colbert Report:
Atheists Get Angry At God
Michelangelo's image of God in the Sistine Chapel
You have to laugh at the irony of this: atheists profess not to believe in God but frequently express anger at the entity they don’t believe in. Elizabeth Landau reports for CNN:
If you’re angry at your doctor, your boss, your relative or your spouse, you can probably sit down and have a productive conversation about it. God, on the other hand, is probably not available to chat.
And yet people get angry at God all the time, especially about everyday disappointments, finds a new set of studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
It’s not just religious folks, either. People unaffiliated with organized religion, atheists and agnostics also report anger toward God either in the past, or anger focused on a hypothetical image – that is, what they imagined God might be like – said lead study author Julie Exline, Case Western Reserve…
God May Not Be the Theoretical Higgs Boson: SHE May Be the Already-Discovered Weak Force
Dickey Eason
We all have our ideas about how the world and universe work. Some of us see the hand of “God” in everything. Others are atheists or agnostics—still others are guided by spirituality. But no matter where we are on the “believe” spectrum, most of us see a rather benign universe. By that I mean that we do not see specific forces struggling with one another in the cosmos once we get away from earth, which is interesting to me. We see conflict and battles on earth but not in the rest of the universe.
We view it much as we do a documentary—no plots, no dynamics—just an intriguing show. We look at ourselves—human life on earth—as being the real show. But that separation has, I believe, caused us to distort our perceptions of the Big Picture. I think if we start seeing the natural conflicts that exist in the universe,…
Stephen Hawking: God Was Not Needed To Create The Universe
Stephen Hawking says the Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe — reported in the Telegraph:
The scientist has claimed that no divine force was needed to explain why the Universe was formed.
In his latest book, The Grand Design, an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”
He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”…
Thinking About God Calms Believers, Stresses Atheists
What does thinking about God do to agnostics though? Report from Live Science:
Researchers have determined that thinking about God can help relieve anxiety associated with making mistakes. However, the finding only holds for people who believe in a God.
The researchers measured brain waves for a particular kind of distress response while participants made mistakes on a test.
Those who had been prepared with religious thoughts had a less prominent response to mistakes than those who hadn’t.
“Eighty-five percent of the world has some sort of religious beliefs,” says Michael Inzlicht, who cowrote the study with Alexa Tullett, both at the University of Toronto-Scarborough.
“I think it behooves us as psychologists to study why people have these beliefs; exploring what functions, if any, they may serve.”
With two experiments, the researchers showed that when people think about religion and God, their brains respond differently—in a way that lets them take setbacks in stride and react…
