Posts Tagged ‘Spirituality’
How Hitler and the Nazis Tried to Steal Christmas
From the Telegraph:
The Nazi Party tried their best to remove Christ from Christmas by paganising carols, producing glittering swastika, iron cross and toy grenade baubles for the fir tree, research for a new exhibition has found.
Many of the changes made under Hitler, put in place to remove the influence of the Jewish-born baby Jesus, are still in use today, much to the alarm of modern Germans.
The swastika-shaped baking trays and wrapping paper adorned with Nazi symbols have long gone, but traces of the Third Reich Christmas can still be found in the subtly rewritten lyrics of favourite carols.
The discoveries have been highlighted by a new exhibition at the National Socialism Documentation Centre in Cologne.
[Read more at the Telegraph]
How Right-Wing Cult Leader Sun Myung Moon Bought Washington
From Alternet:
With money, media and promotion of a conservative political agenda, a self-styled Messiah and convicted felon became a frequent guest at the White House.
“Moon looked on the media as almost the nervous system for a global empire. Moon was the brain, and the media are to be, or were to be, the communications vehicle for his body politic surrounding the globe.”
In January 1992, PBS Frontline broadcast a film I directed that documented the amazing rise, fall and subsequent resurrection of Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church movement. The documentary showed how, through an adroit combination of money, media and the consistent promotion of a conservative political agenda, a self-styled Messiah and convicted felon had rapidly reinvented himself and was soon hailed at the White House.
At the time, few Americans paid…
Cheltenham 2012 Website becomes Hollywood Sensation
Bruce Fenton, the subject of this great article at ThisisGloucestershire, is a long time supporter of all things Disinfo and creator of 2012Rising.com. Keep up the great work Bruce!
Bruce Fenton has long been a prophet of doom – and now Hollywood has caught on.
As the latest end-of-the-world blockbuster 2012 hits movie screens today, the 32-year-old says he will be first through the cinema doors.
Bruce, from Cheltenham, claims to runs the UK’s most popular website dedicated to the cataclysmic Mayan prophecy from which the film takes its story.
The estate agent has spent the past 10 years researching the Mesoamerican culture, which predicts the earth will undergo a series of powerful transformations on December 21 or 23 of that year.
The forecast is based on what’s thought to be the end-date of the Mayan…
Republican Councilman Explains his Paganism
The GOP must be really confused by this. Score one for freedom of religion!
Last week, Councilman-elect Dan Halloran (R-Bayside) narrowly defeated a Democratic candidate in one of the nation’s most liberal cities. Now comes the hard part: explaining his religious beliefs to the press. For the past two decades, the cop-turned-lawyer has been a devout believer in Theodism, a pre-Christian faith rooted in Celtic and Germanic tribal religions. “Understanding my theology is a little difficult for mainstreamers,” admits Halloran, who serves as the “First Atheling,” or king, of a local tribe of 120 followers called New Normandy.
The incoming Councilman tells the Post that his faith is a “cousin religion” to Hinduism, and downplays the role of “humane” animal sacrifices as nothing more than “processing food in a specific way.” “If a Christian goes to a Greek Orthodox lamb roast for Easter, there is nothing considered wrong with that. If a Jewish person decides to keep kosher, [it's similar],” he said. “To say ‘animal sacrifice’ makes it sound like you’re killing an animal willy-nilly.”
Atheism as a Stealth Religion
From ScienceBlogs:
In today’s polarized world, the conflict between atheism and religion is shaping up to be the fight of the century. In this corner, the new atheists, flexing their muscles with books such as God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. In that corner, the religious fundamentalists, who are responsible for 9/11, the Christian takeover of America, polluting the minds of their children, and numberless other atrocities. It’s science and reason against dogmatism and blind faith, making it obvious who the enlightened liberal should root for.
Well, not quite. The truly enlightened liberal should experience a twinge of doubt about the very blackness and whiteness of it. Let me show you how a bit of evolutionary thinking can paint a more interesting picture in…
Health Insurers Must Cover Prayer Under Democrats’ Bill
The L.A. Times reports on an overlooked development in the Democrats’ health care bill:
Inserted by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) with the support of Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry and the late Edward M. Kennedy…A little-noticed provision in the health care overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.
The measure would put Christian Science prayer treatments — which substitute for or supplement medical treatments — on the same footing as clinical medicine.
Phil Davis, a senior Christian Science Church official, said prayer treatment was an effective alternative to conventional health care. But critics say the measure could have a broader effect, conferring new status and medical legitimacy on practices that lie outside the realm of science.
The spiritual healing provision was introduced in the House by…
Mad Scientologists Caught in a Web of Their Own Making
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
Draw near, infidels, for these are dark days for the Knights of Hubbard. Do not despair entirely – the Church of Scientology remains rich, has excellent lawyers and, according to the International Scientology News, ”every minute of every hour, someone reaches for L. Ron Hubbard technology … simply because they know Tom Cruise is a Scientologist”.
So unless the world’s supply of fools is melting away, they can hold off trying to lure disaffected Kabbalists into their cultish communion. And yet, it has not been the best of weeks for our operating thetans. In France, Scientology was found guilty of defrauding followers after a judge effectively debunked the idea of the church’s trusty E-meter, a crude polygraph used to encourage Scientologists to purchase everything from books to…
Cult Busters: How Governments Decide Whether a Religion is Real or Not
From Slate:
A French court fined the Church of Scientology $888,000 on Tuesday after a couple claimed they’d been manipulated into buying between $30,000 and $73,000 worth of church products. The verdict is “a historical turning point for the fight against cult abuses,” said the leader of France’s “government cult-fighting unit.” How does this special cult-busting unit distinguish between cults and bona fide religions?
Vaguely. French law doesn’t define the term “cult.” Rather, it uses the expression “cultlike movements” to describe groups that demand unreasonable financial contributions, encourage nonparticipation in elections, promote anti-social behavior, or cut members off from their families. It’s easier to target bad behavior, the thinking goes, than to get into a semantic debate over what is and isn’t a cult. The French government has, however, tried to define the…
2013: Or, What to Do When the Apocalypse Doesn’t Arrive
Gary Lachman is the author of several well-respected occult-themed books (including the Disinformation book Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius). He asked us to run his take on the 2012 phenomenenon (the essay was originally published in EnlightenNext Magazine):
The belief in a coming end of the world as we know it may seem understandable to people living in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but a look at history shows that it has been part of Western psychology from the beginning.
The central figure of Western religion, Jesus Christ, told his followers that the end was nigh, and most people who accepted Jesus believed that the cosmic last call would come in their lifetime. Yet Jesus worked within an age-old…
Atheism 3.0 Finds a Little More Room For Religion
A surprising article in USA Today suggests that some atheists are now pro-religion while still anti-God:
Bruce Sheiman doesn’t believe in God, but he does believe in religion.
Setting aside the question of whether God exists, it’s clear that the benefits of faith far outweigh its costs, he argues in his new book, An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Humanity is Better Off With Religion than Without It.
“I don’t know if anybody is going to be able to convince me that God exists,” Sheiman said in an interview, “but they can convince me that religion has intrinsic value.”
The old atheists said there was no God. The so-called “New Atheists” said there was no God, and they were vocally vicious about it. Now, the new “New Atheists” — call it Atheism 3.0 — say there’s still no God, but maybe religion isn’t all that bad.
Faith provides meaning and purpose for millions of believers, inspires people to tend to each other and build communities, gives them a sense of union with a transcendent force, and provides numerous health benefits, Sheiman says. Moreover, the galvanizing force behind many achievements in Western civilization has been faith, Sheiman argues, while conceding that he limits his analysis, for the most part, to modern Western religion…
Evolver: 2012, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Dimensional Shift
Where will you be when the 5,125 year Long Count Calendar of the Classical Maya ends on December, 21, 2012? Will you be hiding in an underground cave from global cataclysm and magnetic polar reversal? Will you be entering a multidimensional realm of hyperspace triggered by mass activation of the pineal gland? Will you be picking up the pieces of a ruined world or dancing the night away at the party at the end of time?
Considering that nobody knows what’s going to happen in 2012, the end of the Mayan Calendar functions as a tremendously intriguing meme upon which we can project our hopes and fears, dreams and desires. Hollywood has now offered up a massive collective shadow projection in the form of a $250 million disaster epic that takes the…
Indian Origins of Christianity
Excerpts from “19000 Years of World History: The Story of Religion” by Prithviraj R – a reconstruction of 19,000 year world history, based on the historical content of the scriptures and theologies of ancient religions. The book, for the first time, explains the precise way in which the major religions of the world were born, in a new framework of human history.
Christian theology keeps tying up scholars in knots. There are a lot unexplained elements in it, which almost look mysterious.
What does the phrase “Son of Man” mean? We can understand what “Son of God” means, but what does “Son of Man” mean? Why are the two phrases “Son of Man” and “Son of God” used interchangeably in the scriptures? The explanation generally given is that Jesus wanted to show…
Too Terrifying To Even Contemplate…
Nick P at Black Sun Gazette
In lieu of writing a big long article, I present selected shorts. Today’s roundup includes dumbfuck liberals, pig cops, radical culture in need of money, Obama preparing to bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran, and scariest of all, Cokie Roberts.
Z Mag Is Broke: Starting off with the good news (kind of sort of not really) my buddy Thrash Mike reports over at Refuse To Thrive that Zmag needs money. Zmag is an indispensable source of top-notch radical left reporting. While I don’t always agree with their editorial line (big surprise) I think the world is much enriched by their reporting and investigative journalism. I know the economy sucks, but this is even more important than your favorite local mutant convergence. Reach in your pockets and dig deep.
