Triumph of Faith Over Reason - Senator Ted Cruz - Senate Chair, Science Committee

I say - The bible now. The bible Tomorrow. The bible Forever.

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Spreadsheetization of The Bible in the Global Culture to Support the Corporate Political Base

Spreadsheet Plus Bible Equals Numbers and or Creationism

Spreadsheeting the Bible Leads to Creationism and other political superstitious delusions.

People generally roll their eyes when I try to extrapolate how I see the whole new Global Culture thing as of and by the Corporate Spreadsheet.

They ignore me when I say that the Corporate Global Spreadsheet has reduced everything and everybody on this planet to commodity status and commodity value. 

That in many instances humanity has little or no cash value in the quest for obscene corporate profits and greed. 

That I assign a label as the Wharton Global Spreadsheet to the contamination and or destruction of our local culture(s) at the expense of this new corporate global money hegemony thing.

That as such, many people think they can ignore the present economics of humanity and still separately and equally apply old fashioned cultural or religious standards to things.

As such, I see on the right the usurpation of religion by politics to win elections and to take human rights and living wages away from humanity.

That the growth of ignorance in religion in my lifetime has I think grown exponentially and with no doubt help from the global corporate hegemony, directly or indirectly.  

That I truly believe that the current growth of fundamentalism and creationism and turning the black on white words of the bible into a commodity to be used for political and economic reasons rather than spiritual growth is due to the Spreadsheet-ization of the Bible into statistics and delusional facts to support the political base. 



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Darwin's Box

I think that Darwin's box, which is a good metaphor, expanded the possibility of thoughts regarding science way out of the ball park in terms of 19th century western thought. If you stick you neck out, think outside the present box, and are proven right with your theories, then the box of reality expands for everyone. 

In fact, I think using the same metaphor, that the Creationists' box, ability to perceive or understand, is merely a pedestal that Charles Darwin is standing on in his new box IMO. 

I use the time, dating, calendar idea to expand perception, in reaction to the really dull loop arguments I read over and over again from creationists. A little bit like rants from Mao's little red book. The calendar I mention is the year 152 A.D.I. (After Darwin' Idea). The Gregorian calendar with its start date of Jesus, if he existed, being born around 4-6 B.C.E., is a built in unproven prejudice used in the arguments of the fundies, who with that calendar then do not expand thought, but collapse backwards into a six thousand year old fishbowl/universe. Duh!

The playing field, the arguments pro and con on creationism and intelligent design, the ground rules need to be expanded. Most people start and end in frustration with them because many  assume the present world is real, that Jesus is two thousand years old etc. Actually to get political here, if you try to ask for Jesus's birth certificate from them, they will hold up the book that they worship. 

In a way, in a modern scientific way, at least we know or have stronger evidence that Charles Darwin actually existed with papers, photos, portraits, biographies, written certifiable court room testimony type witnesses etc. A better starting point for a western calendar. The eastern world, philosophies, time etc. is another can of worms all together. 

Regarding the bible, during my long term search, research into faith, spirituality, I ran into a blog of a homeless man in Nashville who no doubt was running it on a computer interface at the local public library. He said, being a person who had to smile when getting handouts, food, survival, from the fundamentalists and in reaction to their preaching, evangelization, he said something to the effect that these people worship the physical book itself. Mumbling the words in it and not understanding them and repeating them over and over again is in a way not their faith but really their idol. 

And a final note on Darwin. A business psychologist in college whose insights I found interesting defined Great Men as men who made the world see itself differently. In the context of recent history, he defined people like Einstein, Gandhi and Darwin as great men because they changed the world with their POV. They in essence helped change the world's POV.

The problem I get with all fundies and the creationists in particular is that they have no respect for other people's POV. It is all a war mentality. Expand or collapse.

(What is the difference between General Moses, General Constantine and General Mohammed? None. They all founded religions of peace.) (sarcasm)






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Marcus Bachmann – Christofascism vs. the Barbarians

There’s a lot of anger and hate floating around the Internet these days regarding Michelle Bachmann’s light in the loafers husband Dr. Marcus Bachmann, the deprogrammer for gays, with a mail order PhD. in Chist?ian counc?ling.

God only knows what hell those 23 foster kids went through living in the Bachmann Chris?ian home for thirty dollars a day each, tax free, over the years. Were they there merely as a meal ticket for the Bachmanns or were they there to experiment the new world order on? 

It is because the Bachmann’s, in the case with the foster kids, had to send them to public school and not to home schooling like the Bachmann’s five natural Christian programmed children,  that is what got future Representative Bachmann all steamed up about the mainstream science and evolution thingies.  About those things in particular being taught in the public schools is what started her present career in politics with the sole purpose to shut down public education.  

It is their Jesus’ way or the Highway!

It is the least common denominator factor thingy in the ongoing dumbing down of America thing.

This is what I do not like but it is human nature.  Cher, on her twatter, sends out an insulting message about Marcus and the whole world, especially the MSM, sits back and reports on the bitch bitch rants of the gay community towards a supposedly Vatican like professional closeted fraud such as Doctor Marcus. 

In a way, the Barbarians that Doc Marcus calls homosexuals, Barbarians that must be taught and disciplined, is in a way code talk for the new Christofascism.  It is "the way" of the extreme right wing of the Republican party that has hyjacked that party.  Making people act against their instincts and or their own best interests is what fascism is all about.

Pro-life is code for the abortion issue and not code for the need for social networks to follow the teaching of Jesus regarding the personal obligation to love your neighbor.

And the name of Jesus itself is code talk, not for the God of traditional Trinity delusion.

Their Jesus is God.  Yahweh is Jewish and suspect and the Holy Spirit is any spiel to talk god bullshit and empty the sheep’s pockets.  Jesus is God Incorporated and Tax Free for every huckster or used car salesman who can start a store front meal ticket church.  Halleluiah!

In fact, for Opus Dei candidates like Rick Santorum or other Christofascists like Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann, it is all about appearances no matter how dysfunctional and hell like their domestic family situation is for their children.  Appearance and hypocrisy are all that matter in Tea Partyville.

In a way the Fascism in the name of Christ is nothing new in the last century.  In a way the very pagan Arian pseudoscience of Creationism, or even the theology of Marx as a Christ substitute, has all been tried and tested in Europe in the nineteen thirties prior to fifty million human beings being wasted in WWII in an experiment to see how far insanity can fly, walk, talk or stick to the wall  in any political forum.

Worked before for the crazies.  Let’s do it again.

History repeats itself.

God (the real God) save us all!

Fred Flintstone Endorses Michele Bachmann for Presidency

(Des Moines) Fred Flintstone, his stage name, a local actor, is endorsing Representative Michele Bachmann’s GOP bid for the Presidency.

Fred, who describes himself as an expert Fossil Reenactor, was recently laid off at a local Creationist Museum because of the economy.  He currently does children’s birthday parties and occasionally performs at home schools.

“I do the method acting thing. Really get into my subject of being a caveman who knows how to interact with dinosaurs and is of course waiting for the Savior to be born.  It’s a specialty that calls for a certain amount of dedication and consecration. 

When asked why he was endorsing Bachmann he replied.

“Well she is like Shakespeare when she says things like ‘A grain of wheat plus a starfish does not equal a dog, and that this is what evolutionists are teaching in our schools’.

“We can’t let the government shut down home schools and force kids to learn godless science.  Besides, home schools right now account for close to half this actor’s bread and butter. 

Is Intelligent Design Bullshit ?

If you can define the parameters of any argument, you have the advantage to winning the argument.

I remember when the Jerry Falwell Public Relations oily communication thing was all cranked up under the emperor god Reagan. Cranking out the evil of “secular humanism”.

I at the time heard the phrase and was too busy living my life to try and understand this new modern phrase for satanism or the like. Few if any were challenging the new word factory being pumped out of Fundamentism Central or to admit my ignorance, I was not aware of anybody fighting this abuse of language in the name of the Jebus cash cow.

In retrospect, it is two words. It is secular, a neutral thing. And it is about humanism, a good thing. How can two fine words be put together and be so misused.

How about Intelligent Design as an example?

I recently heard the term Intelligent Design.

From Wiktionary – Intelligent Design :

A conjecture claiming that biological life on Earth, or more broadly, the universe as a whole, was created by an unspecified intelligent agent rather than being the result of undirected natural processes.

Intelligent Design grates on my ear. If Joe the Pope likes it, I know there must be something anti-free choice and pro-mind control about it.

Pope prepares to embrace theory of intelligent design

There have been growing signs the Pope is considering aligning his church more closely with the theory of "intelligent design" taught in some US states. Advocates of the theory argue that some features of the universe and nature are so complex that they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Critics say it is a disguise for creationism…

The Pope also raised the issue in the inaugural sermon of his pontificate, saying: "We are not the accidental product, without meaning, of evolution."

Intelligent design seems like half-assed science to me. It is two parts “H” without the “O”. It is Hydrogen without Oxygen. It is not the answer. It is not water – the basis of all carbon life forms as we think we understand them. It is an assumption. If you assume, you are likely to makes an “ass” of “U” and “me”.

We may not be an accident in the Universe. But who is to say how much randomness was programmed into the original design? Who is to say that that “design” was not the result of whole eons of universes coming and going from big bang to ultimate implosion over and over again? Maybe randomness is the ultimate program – and not the desired dead end stop – of us – as we would like it or temporarily Re-design it to be?

Maybe this dead end result of how great we are as a species is stalled – an idol of we who cannot manage the natural resources of this planet bestowed on us by “Nature”.

We stand on this sick and or dying planet proclaiming ourselves to be the greatest designed species in the history of the universe.

We, as a limited species, are more than likely little more than a Ford model Edsel, 1958-1960. – Just waiting for another species to absorb or destroy us before we get the chance to destroy ourselves looking blindly into the mirror of life and only seeing “man” and or the man made design of the latest great version of a personal god. Me. Me. Me. Me. I!

It is a continuation of the concept of the personal gods designed in separate ages by Abraham, Moses and Mohammed. The energy that each comes up with to make an intellectual choice and say this is what it is all about may be fine and good. But what did Abraham, Moses and or Mohammed really believe?

If the bible and other writings are any indication of anything, over time the three gods of three prophets merge into one god. We somehow along with cultural conformity must conform to this ancient hodge podge of thought by once living intelligent beings each in their own historic setting. They and their resulting hodge podge of things are valid? And we are not?

I have to agree with the argument in Urban Dictionary that this shit should be taught in schools along with creationism and Darwinism. I look forward to apocryphal stories of Jebus accidently killing his pet dinosaur “Spike” and resuscitating it too etc.

In a way, all of us, individually and collectively and even the disorganized religion types needs a better and or new definition of God. All the old definitions of God, I think, are obsolete.

Though you might not think it, I am searching for that other new definition of God.

I would not think of imposing my definition on others, should I find it, for the sake of an alpha-male “I am RIGHT and you are wrong!” kind of thing.

I respect those people with the gumption to say “I don’t honestly know”.

This grasping for a cliché – sound bite - assumption called Intelligent Design sounds more like imitation science than true faith.

We must I think, agree with Voltaire’s character of Candide, and “cultivate our own gardens” because this is not “the best of all possible worlds”.

Good luck to us all, the human race, in Copenhagen.

Mosque of Miriam Paris?

America used to be called the dumping ground of Europe. Europe, now with so many immigrants, will be twenty percent Muslim by 2050 by stats I have seen lately. Nothing outwardly wrong with that unless you fear Islam. (And the GOP vehemently complains about the many Catholics coming north from Meso-America.)

Is it possible to envision the sale of an unused obsolete house of worship like Notre Dame in Paris around 2075 with the plaza outside to accommodate daily Muslim prayers? Anything is possible. Whatever.

Anti-science campaigns by fundamentalists in this country have brought forth a kind of false science with the resurrection of dinosaurs to stand along side Jesus in popular local belief and myth as creationism.

Creationism, by default, would seem to be slipping into Islamic common beliefs or lack of them. It is not that I am campaigning for or against Charles Darwin, patron saint of modern science, but only three or so of twenty-two Muslim majority population countries even touch upon the topic of evolution in their education systems.

Creationism would seem to happen by default by either believing in the literal myth of creation in Genesis or by the lack of any Genesis like text in Islam.

As such, educated scientific minds of all persuasions, Muslim or not, gathered in Cairo this week to discuss the western, European concept of evolution.

Egypt’s Darwin debates

She (Dr. Eugenie Scott) objected to science being viewed through a religious filter and said the two should not be confused. "A biologist who studies enzymes that cause cell division does not bring the Qur'an or Bible into it. It does a great violence to science to run your explanation through a religious filter for this understanding to be accepted."

Lots of uncharted grounds here in the merging of cultures, religions, sciences, myths and human nature.

Islam as a culture carried on basic science while Europe wallowed in the ignorance of the Dark Ages. It would appear that there is at present no real dividing line, concepts set in stone by words, by culture, or in thought about the idea of science or evolution or even the strictest sense of creationism across the Islamic world.

Creationism Gains Ground in Europe

Prof Reiss will tell the gathering that many European nations are yielding to pressure exerted from both East and West in the growth of creationist beliefs, with Muslim immigrants on one side and the importation of Christian fundamentalism on the other…

“What the Turks believe today is what the Germans and British believe tomorrow. It is because of the mass movement of people between countries,” he told The Guardian newspaper yesterday. “These things can no longer be thought of as occurring in other countries.

In London ... there are increasingly quite large numbers of highly intelligent 16, 17 and 18-year-olds doing advanced-level biology who do not accept evolution. That’s either because they come from a fundamentalist Christian background or from Muslim backgrounds.”…

But Prof Reiss said although Islam does not suggest that the world was very young – a tenet of Christian creationism – its texts say different organisms had separate origins.

The world continues to merge in thoughts and deeds. The future global society is one of a mix of many things both of scientific and religious myth.

The future is full of possibilities real, imagined and unimagined. The tidal wave of humanity and mixed ideas are already washing over the landscape in the growing Global Culture. Many perspectives are too close to focus on at present. I do not care whether Darwin or Jesus’ pet dinosaur wins in the end. I will not likely be alive in any case to see that future cultural landscape.

Food for thought.

Of gods, Monsters and Intelligent Design?

I don’t know what to make of all the fake science that is trying to get endorsed or believed these days.

Intelligent Design is supposed to tell us that the universe is not a random chaotic thing, which it is. They would have you believe that there is an intelligent design (by God) to the whole mess. The Vatican and or its German speaking surrogates such as Cardinal Schoenborn of Vienna back Intelligent Design.

There is supposed to be some international meeting of minds or conference on Darwin sponsored by the Vatican on the calendar right about now. Don’t hold your breath expecting any intelligent outcome or pronouncements. One critic, the former head of the Vatican Observatory Father George V. Coyne, a real scientist, got fired over his views about real rational science, which is opposed to fake science or Intelligent Design. I don’t think he was invited to this Darwin Conference thing.

The whole folly comes within the realm of Voltaire from his book Candide and the philosophical falsity that this world is “le meilleur des mondes possibles” – the best of all possible worlds. Délusion. Délusion. Délusion.

If the earth is of an intelligent design then why did the Intelligent Designer waste hundreds of millions of years on the Dinosaur Project ???

The Creationist theory will tell you that the Bible, being the exact and perfect world of God, proves that science is wrong in determining the age of the earth. They will tell you that all physical evidence must fit into the five thousand year old timeframe of the Bible. That is why if you stop off at some GOP endorsed Creationist Museum, you will see our ancestors, as cave men and women, living in harmony with the dinosaur things.

The Bible is a flawed document. The bible is a human document. The New Testament is a committee written document. Jesus changes from a human being to a god in the time frame of three hundred years. Jesus’ words, wisdom, divine inspiration and divine mission have been subordinated to politics since his death almost two thousand years ago.

Did he rise from the dead ? Definitely. As a Christian I believe that. God can do anything including raise the dead. To believe in Jesus is to believe in the higher powers of an evolved, evolving species called man. I have faith in the non-tangible abilities and powers of God and his servant Jesus.

These religious screamers call faith, faith, faith. I do not think they believe or have faith. They need an exact user manual for life – a rule book. If anything, the day to day struggle of Jesus to get imperfect people to listen to his more perfect evolved message for the human race seems at times to have been wasted on many deaf human ears.

So too the flaws of the Old Testament are obvious. The Hebrew Testament does not get written or fully consolidated until after the Babylonian captivity. Along the way to consolidation several non-communicating committees manage to lose ten tribes and the Ark of the Covenant.

Tangible things such as fake relics like the Shroud of Turin or a Jesus Ossuary - speaks of non-faith in the original person and the true message of the teacher of Jesus.

What I have found or sensed along the way of this study of my own beliefs is the negatuve reception or reaction of others to the Gnostic concept of a divine spark within. Negative belief too in the possiblility of Jesus as a bearer or in his own recognition of that divinity. The role of bearer and of recognition connotes great responsibility to go forward in life as bearer of the light of God within and with that light to be given freely to others. Few of us now or in the generations past have come close to the ideal of Jesus as evolved enlightened being and creation of God.

There is hope - the human race continues and “Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”…(W.B.Yeats)

The problem with the Gnostic belief approach is that 99.9% of humanity do not seem to want responsibility. They want to be sheep and they want to be led. As such, the P.T.Barnum types in the Vatican and the far right fundamentalists need road shows, conferences, freak shows, museums, literal interpretation of myths - tangible proof of their so-called faith – which is not faith but seems so much more like superstition.

The show goes on.

Popcorn! Peanuts! Cotton Candy!