Four Basic Steps to Western Style Atheism

Four Basic Steps to Western Style Atheism

One – Catholic “Christian” – Have never read the New Testament.

Two – Protestant “Christian” – Have read the New Testament at least once.

Three – Agnostic “Christian” – Have read New Testament at least twice.

Four – Atheist (ex-“Christian”) – Have read NT at least three times. Etc. (And or never read IT.)

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Six years on – this cultural” Christian” is still wandering around in the dark (but with a better sense of direction perhaps than six years ago)

Just because man invented the concept of god, (it) does mean that god does not exist.

After six years of this blog I have many times, in describing my perceptions of things, that in terms of people trying to find some spiritual satisfaction in the old religions, I am content to report that they, along with myself included, have many times come away empty from this search.

That many times these old religions are obsolete because the god and or gods on which these old religions are based – the god-base is obsolete as well. Obscure gods giving obscure directions to even obscurer and or dim-witted souls (“humans”).

Obsolete because they, she, he, it, do not presently fully integrate with the new definitions needed to co-exist with the new virtual global reality. Clear vision for the faithful - reading the myth once more to remain in perfect harmony with the “sacred” message born out of the ancient oral sounds and or written text? Yeah right.

I have stated many times that the old definition of god ( in the context of my cultural corner of the universe) in this modern global culture needs a new definition to be relevant in the repeating of the myth - for the ten trillionth and one time.

Today – I believe that not only the definition of god is obsolete but for sake of a better thing to say – god too is obsolete as well in our growing robot dependent culture.  Obsolete - and irrelevant as well? (God, or its new definition, is a thing evolving that we now at present do not recognize and I fear - is right in front of us as well.)

Man as a monkey evolved with hands to make tools and make daily bread / food and or shelter. God at some points of the timeline got defined by the monkeys. GOD of the future is presently being designed (redesigned?) and is I think, by true definition, literally a logarithm?

Today, technology and toys are the tools not to create anything real, but dependency, so much a virtual stop gap measure, but something shiny to occupy the monkey masses while the robots, ATMs, credit cards, I-pods, I-phones, goog-L-glasses, games etc. take hold invading the ancient body politic, home, culture. The old hand of power slipping silently, gently into a newer glove of power?

Does that make me an atheist – at least for one day? No. Not really. It all depends on what your definition of atheist is – is.

And quite frankly what I see of all these I.V. league dis-educated trust fund elite types on both sides of the English speaking pond - all shouting at each other in alpha male posturing to be the head of the heap of this new atheist religion thing masquerading as an anti-religion/anti-god thing – I don’t see much. A corner street fight, not a major world religion contender.

Nothing in a major way from that side of the court except for a few small voices drowned out in that local street fight thing for power on a small turf thing but one with the ability to grow and franchise, cashing in on the new “None” of the above religious beliefs – Nones – and their growing footprint of - by default “religious” and or “non-religious” POVs.

Replacing god and or religion with your new non-definitions or more accurately, these non-definitions of god and religion are many times mixed with secular politics. In a way, and for some time, the ruling elites like the atheist Koch Brothers / George Soros types have been maneuvering within their greedy anti-human capitalism religion to downgrade the old Christ religion in favor of the new Capitalist religion – where the magic hands of high priests of capitalism make the magic bread of a “perfect” (man-made) economic model.  “Perfect” is god. Therefore capitalism must be “god”. Etc.

Whatever.

That dependence on electricity, clean water, calories, fossil fuel based heat and energy, communication electronics, games, entertainment, time killing drugs, drone office cubicle “work” etc. The old religions are dead. The old gods are dead. The new religion, the new god, is injected into the dependent veins of the present race addicted to convenience and the ignorance tagged along with it.

The old economics are dead as well but let’s not go there. The forensics of dissecting that dead old economic dinosaur of ages past is beyond my mere blogging spot. LMAO

I can well imagine myself being a Roman in the last days of Rome and not believing in the old gods and here comes along the mean desert god male army penis religion of Constantine to tell me what to believe and when to march and when to worship the emperor etc. = Constantine’s “Christ”-inanity.

The story of Constantine’s Roman “Christ” myth as the basis of his new Roman Empire State Religion have been told a couple of trillion of times by now on the timeline of human history and a couple hundred thousand times in my personal timeline at least as well.

A lie told once is still a lie. A lie and or myth told a trillion times is still a lie and or a myth - and or the basic cultural myth (shit mixed with dirt at our feet) of all - like it or not...

That there are those minor conflicts of the myth of original Jewish rabbi “Jesus” (“Jesus Christ minus the Constantine Christ) – conflicts many times within the dumbed down media exercise to kill intelligence (old time) and more importantly kill time as the clock runs out toward the designed future of the minority elites living in space (bubble) pods here and on other planets and the voids of space off-planet.

More and more the extremes in politics and its many masks (in and of religion and or economics) - reminds me of religious and or satanic cults of the past = brainwashing by any other name = not reality by my personal definition of it.

And so it goes. 

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What Religion is Art Pope in North Carolina – the First American Christian Sharia State?

North Carolina’s New Sharia Pope – Art Pope – is dismantling a diverse democratic state. 

It was bound to happen sooner or later – the race to establish an official state religion first in North Carolina and then later, throughout the old incestuous inbred Old Confederacy with this mental disease and lastly to take down the U.S. Constitution. 

The Second Amendment murdering the First Amendment. Cain Kills Abel so to speak.

Like many of these nebbish mystery think tank billionaires trying to reestablish human slavery in America for the corporations, I cannot find a religion listed anywhere for “Pope” Art Pope, the new Boss Tweed of Religious politics in North Carolina.  

Art like the Koch Brothers is not an atheist? His "god" is probably just money and power.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/04/08/1832201/meet-the-north-carolina-legislature-the-new-ground-zero-for-tea-party-craziness/

Eleven Republicans, including the state’s House Majority Leader (Edgar V. Starnes), backed a resolution proclaiming that the Constitution “does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional,” and then decreeing that North Carolina could establish its own state religion. On the bright side, state house Speaker Thom Tillis announced that he would not advance this resolution after it was widely panned.

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The new face(s) of American Atheism – Todd Stiefel

CNN has this “Belief” Blog page that gives all sides a chance to present their point of view. And there usually is a few thousand typical dumbed down American “Duh!” comments made and repeated hundreds of cliché times perhaps by a few dozen regular trolls left and right for the sake of balance and appearance of modern style “Journalism”.

This past weekend I think they had this piece about Todd Stiegel being the new face of Atheism in America. He has spent something like three and a half million dollars on billboards on buses selling the new Atheist religion and or dogmas of belief in anti-theism, is that a new word?

Well I am all well and glad that the Atheists are getting out of the closet for free of past fears that some red neck bible thumpers and Wayne Lapierre kill ya with a gun dandy lobbyist types will kill you for not believing in the angry desert god of the mono-theists (sounds like a disease?).

Todd’s bio about getting to the point of being a good Catholic Boy and giving up the faith when he realized in college, after reading the bible, that it is a poorly constructed OT and NT piece of uninspired writing – the bio leaves out the 100,000 word book that should fill in the gap between uninspired bible book stuff and how he got to Atheist. 

Maybe he is just a Areligionist like me and wasting all his time on the dogma of that Atheist shit.

The CNN piece sounded like it was a polished knock off of Todd’s Foundation’s mimeographed PR handout appealing for mo’ money, mo’ money like any other whoring church, synagogue, mosque, temple, storefront on the planet.

Of course Todd is soft spoken and affable and lives in laid back North Carolina where he presently makes his base trying to spend the billions his family made in chemicals or Pharmas or something like that.

Three and a half million Todd – chump change! Time to pump the chumps for their change?

Todd is no loud mouthed drunk like Hitchens or over educated academic don like Dawkins.

Stiefel and his real long term agenda, whatever it is, is tied up presently, short term, in with a coalition of other middle of the road, so-called non-religious but money collecting types, the Secular Coalition of America.

http://secular.org/

Whatever.


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Deist on the Cusp of Theism – and Areligionist too

(Wm.) Blake on Man (Newton)

Eduardo Paolozzi 1924-2005

Just a reminder to my readers to refresh your memories.  I remain areligionist. Without religion or dogma. Remain a cultural christian (small c). 

I heard a remark from comedian Kathy Griffin on one of her comedy specials about not believing anything but not wanting to join the atheists – an anal lot mostly. I agree.

So for the sake of further clarification I am a:  Deist on the Cusp of Theism (want my cake and eat it too)

The use of the word theism to indicate this classical form of monotheism began during the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century in order to distinguish it from the then-emerging deism which contended that God, though transcendent and supreme, did not intervene in the natural world and could be known rationally but not via revelation. - - Wikipedia

“Just because man invented God does not mean that God does not exist” - - M. McShea

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St. Mary’s School in Platteville Wisconsin – a Valuable Lesson in Humility?

Fr. John del Priore

Fr. Faustino Ruiz

                                                 

You can sometimes judge a story by the way the local press deals with a story as in the case of St. Mary’s School in Platteville Wisconsin which I believe is now closed.  I say the local press has not gone much beyond the handed out press releases or public letters of Bishop Morlino of Madison Wisconsin, Paul Ryan’s local bishop, because there are no good visuals or images of St. Mary’s available on the Internet.

The skinny and or gossip is that Bishop Morlino imported some nice looking white boy priests from Spain, some sort of Jesuits to man the factory floor, mass factories in his diocese.  Looking at a diocese site there they actually have pictures of the clergy there and the parish listing and a limited work history.  Kind of like an Internet dating or religious meat rack.  I guess you want to see what color the priest is in the local Catholic church before you set foot in.  Want you to feel all comfortable in your warm comfort zones and prejudices. 

Well the skinny on the skinny of that is that I only count one or two dark faces and the rest of the priests of Madison County Diocese are white even if they have Hispanic and or Spanish sounding names.  It’s the visual that Madison Avenue has us trained on these past decades.

I have read about South Asian Priests and African Priests being imported to places like the Allentown diocese. I have to wonder if the mail order catalogues the bishops get their priests overseas from have their pictures posted or maybe the importation fees listed next to the pictures is a more important consideration, the money that is and not the look, on that in every diocese devoid of native son priests.

That is why celibacy is not an issue with the locals RC bishops. Priests are an interchangeable part even if you can’t decipher their fractured English or strange outlooks on life based on their native cultures. Celibacy is not an issue.  If Americans don’t want to be priests, plenty of starving third world types to fill in the personnel gaps.

With St. Mary’s they say that the imported priests would have none of the altar girls in the sanctuary thing. The cultural preferences or prejudices of the Spanish culture get put under labels or categories like Conservative Catholics? Etc.

The people in the pews rebelled and voted with their pocket books, even signed a petition to the bishop and the Bishop’s response was a typical these days in America – Fuck You.

The dissenters at St. Mary’s get threatened with excommunication or something close to it – “interdict” – and Paul Ryan gets a free pass on his temporary masturbation love, flirtation with Ayn Rand atheism.

No money. They close the school. The respect the landlord, the bishop, the guy with the deed gets goes a lot to do with the bishop’s generosity in extending financial help to keep a school open. 

No respect, no kissing of Morlino’s stinky toes and the local Catholics in Platteville Wisconsin are taught a valuable lesson about Christ – the golden rule – they that have the gold make the rules. 

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St. Mary's Catholic School Platteville Wisconsin

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Comedian Maher De-Mormonizes Romney's Father in law

Was Jesus an Atheist?

I had a dream the other day.  I half imagined that in all the misquotes, reconstructions of the Jesus story to fit the new Constantine retrofit to his imperial fascist purposes, that Jesus’ real crime, if he really existed, was not that he claimed to be the messiah and or the son of man/god.

Jesus, if he was a true revolutionary, was ready to overthrow the state.  His real crime was atheism.  Or, at least the atheism as defined in Roman terms.  They are the ones that had to sign off on any execution.

The big deal with the Romans/Italians is the opera.  While on the surface Rome was tolerant to everybody’s petty gods, the real god was the state and the real power of god was the emperor, head of the army.  Not to believe in the emperor or pay tribute or give sacrifice or worship or respect was in fact to establish your non-verbal assertion that you did not give a damn about the state.

Taxes are one thing.  An empire starts to die when people start to dodge their public responsibility.  Gold is one thing, the other thing is respect or at least the tacit consent of the governed to the government set up.  Respect meant not only paying taxes but engaging in the secular religion of patriotism, of group identity and tribal solidarity.

One of the main criticisms we see in the few unfiltered, uncensored historic documents about the way the Romans had to first deal with the Jews and after them the early Christians was their sense of the abstract.

The fact that the Jews did not have an idol in their main temple must have been an odd sense of reality and or religion in the traditional set up of such things in those days.

In a sense, the Jews in Palestine were one issue to the Romans.  The other no doubt had to do with every local Jewish town within every large Roman city, and in particular Rome.

So in a sense, the Jews, like everybody else in Rome, had to come out in the open at least once a year to give tribute and sacrifice to the Emperor and symbol of the state.  After the emperors started calling themselves gods and building temples and idols of themselves in their temples, they put people like the Jews on the spot.  Tribute to the head of state was in a technical sense worship of a false non-Jewish god.

Tensions in the Jewish town in Rome had the emperor Claudius throw them outside of the city walls where they built another ethnic enclave. It was the fact that this Jewish town did not burn down in 64 C.E. that got the rumor mills going about the Jews starting the fire and the subsequent revenge against them.

 

Further rewrites in decades and centuries to come will have the fire blamed only on the Christians, a few, if any that existed, and that which probably lived on the edge of the Jewish town.

It is the later Christian propaganda about 64 C.E. that clouds, eliminates historic focus on the Roman pogrom against the Jews of Rome. This event I think was a remote spark of the rebellion in Palestine that traveled back there and started officially two years later as a continuation of Nero’s improvised urban renewal project and real estate fire sale within Rome.

The Jews themselves in Palestine had their own problems with the Romans wanting statues of their emperor/gods put inside the Jewish Temple.

 

No doubt there were negotiations, bribes, riots but in the end Rome ruled in Palestine and puppets rulers both secular and religious were put in place to act in the name of Rome.

So, the truth about Jesus might well be that on a macro level, he had no respect for the state.  No respect for the Temple priests and he wanted a revolution to replace them in a revolution, no doubt more violent than peaceful.  I cannot imagine a Mahatma Gandhi succeeding in civil disobedience against the state back then.  That what crucifixion was for.

So, Jesus, perhaps betrayed by some of his own followers, more likely betrayed by spies in his ranks, put him first in front of the Temple priests, no doubt because he was or posed in some capacity in the role of a rabbi in his day to day existence among the masses.

When Constantine hijacked the Jesus movement, no doubt it was easier to write the final scenes of the gospels as Jesus committing blasphemy in the eyes of the defunct and despised Jewish state and religion.  More retro PC anti-Semitic material for the Constantine crowd to make and frame the virtues of a new Jesus god who was anti-Jewish, anti-old religion and pro-Rome.

No doubt the temple police picked the trouble maker of Jesus up and delivered him to some sort of formal religious hearing.  No doubt the puppet Jewish priests handed Jesus over to the Romans and no doubt he was labeled as somebody who did not respect or support the priests and or the ruling religion of the state.

In other words, he was an atheist of sorts.  Of course, I believe he had his own private personal perception and beliefs regarding the God thing, mixed with his public beliefs, political and or religious. His popular front with the poor people was probably the real reason for his elimination by the state and its cronies.

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” could not have been possibly been said by Jesus.  It was no doubt another standard Eusebius of Caesarea fraudulent type insertion into Constantine’s approved gospels three hundred years later.

Was Jesus an atheist?  I think yes. 

I think yes in a public timeline sense in that he did not believe in the belief systems already in place at the time.  He was against the theism of common popularity that supported oppression in his homeland.  

His own personal beliefs and or his search for a new understanding and definition of the Deity were no doubt quite a different matter entirely.

Panentheism – God, the Sacred Other?

Panentheism

"Simply put, in pantheism, God is the whole; however, in panentheism, the whole is in God. This means that the universe in the first formulation is practically the whole itself. In the second formulation, the universe and God are not ontologically equivalent. In panentheism, God is not necessarily viewed as the creator or demiurge. In panentheism, God is viewed as the eternal animating force behind the universe. Some versions suggest that the universe is nothing more than the manifest part of God. In some forms of panentheism, the cosmos exists within God, who in turn "pervades" or is "in" the cosmos. While pantheism asserts that God and the universe are coextensive, panentheism claims that God is greater than the universe. In addition, some forms indicate that the universe is contained within God. Much Hindu thought is highly characterized by panentheism and pantheism."

Sam Harris – Journey to Atheism

Perhaps the old definitions of God, being obsolete, has created a gap, called the present atheism, leading to a possible future redefinition of that past idea and or concept – by a first modern generation, of not touched by past religion, atheists.

Atheism - defining it

Without God. Without Religion. Without sensitivity to human values. A great big ugly me only world. Greed. Progress. Secularism. How do you define atheism?

No easy or simple definition. The civilization that has evolved since the last ice age is strutting somewhat sans many of the ancient belief or superstition operating systems these days.

Cold, mechanical, soulless. The modern age is the modern age. Some of us see the lack of culture everyday related to a lack of respect for centuries old traditions that many times are also the local culture or the local religion.

A burger from a Yankee fast food place is symbolic of the changing face of global culture, capitalism and human values.

The American middle class model, which the whole world seems to desire, will strip the planet of all dignity and resources unless we somehow learn to not only conserve but preserve traditional ways.

Global integration to some godless model or ideal stands side by side with long standing models. Tomorrow is as bleak as we individually choose to make life. That, without outside forces of economics pushing us along an uncharted untraveled road of life.

The message of Jesus in his Gospels is as real and raw as it was two thousand years ago. A man’s soul is perhaps the sum of all the values that a man holds in life. If we serve ourselves, do we serve others as well? How to live in the world and to be free from the outside forces of change that want us to conform to somebody else’s model of living.

Some Christians may fear atheism as a belief system. Some Christians do not practice what they preach or understand the message.

The message is not to sell your soul in this life and to prepare for a kingdom not of this earth after we pass away. Godless, soulless atheism has always existed in the selfish ways of men and women.

The capacity to bring heaven to earth has always been there. Trick is in trying to focus on the goals of Jesus’ message to love your neighbor as yourselves and in equal measure to attachment and love for the Creator God.

Tea with God and Stephen Hawking

It is perhaps overflow from the British Press into the American MSM that makes this new Atheist movement among Brits with some science credentials seem like the Wittenburg bulletin board of our time.

Stephen Hawking says there's no creator God; the twitterverse reacts

But Thursday, the acclaimed physicist and mathematician shot to the top of the list--and not because of another hilarious wheelchair-bound appearance on The Simpsons. Hawking hit the news cycle because The Times of London excerpted his new book, The Grand Design, on Thursday. In the book, which releases this week from Bantam Press (and which, admittedly, I haven't read), Hawking concludes that a Creator is unnecessary for the universe to exist.

Is this news? Not really. Hawking has made it clear in the past that he's not religious, and his ex-wife, Jane, outed him as an atheist in her biography about their marriage. But Hawking has always been careful to delineate between religion and science, and his past writings seemed to have left open a window allowing for a God-like creator.

The Brits still dysfunctional sixty odd years after their Empire fell and still stuck with the Queen at Tea are off on a tangent about God and belief again.

Hawking, while toated for twenty odd years as an Einstein – ain’t.

Personal opinions, belief, science and a charged media should stand back and reflect. One momentary headline from a famous Brit personage changes nothing in the universe which is or is not created.

IT is.  (the Universe)

Amazing how the wonder of the U can be reduced to a pile of used wallpaper for the sake of publicity on one minor book.

Christopher Hitchens - Trashing the Dead or The New Necromancy

I know it an unsightly boorish thing to question the wit, the unquestioned wit of a Brit who helps the dumbed down American landscape elevate itself to new highs of undeserved grandeur.

Tea time, High Tea, cocktail party. When is it “appropriate to say fuck in public?”

Not over the body of a Japanese man who lived through two of the most tragic days thus far in Human Existence and in two of the most unfortunate places to witness our shared Human Tragedy – Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“WTF” is all the incredibly talented but constantly drunk and boorish Christopher Hitchens has to say about the sufferings of a 93 year old Japanese man.

O Lucky Man - Sometimes "WTF?" is the only rational response to a situation

The brute fact must also be faced that there is something approximately 30 percent farcical, even funny, about the whole tale. There's almost no point in not laughing about it. The late Alan Clark, Tory historian and amoral wit, once drew up a list of the occasions on which it is permissible to employ the word fuck in polite society. One of his examples was, "What the fuck was that?" as uttered by the mayor of Hiroshima. Add to this the mayor of Nagasaki exclaiming the same thing just as Yamaguchi stumbles onstage, and you can arguably build a bit of a routine around it. Unfeeling, you say? Not particularly. It isn't my idea that these capricious catastrophes strike the just and the unjust with such regularity, or that they are soothingly explained away by the pseudo-compassionate. Of all the great cosmic questions, WTF still strikes me as one of the most pressing, relevant, and ultimately humane.

I think it a bit disrespectful if not downright vulgar to have devoted a whole spiel – burlesque set up for a punch line at a cocktail party and to not mention the bits and pieces of suffering this Japanese man went through because he perhaps was lucky or unlucky to have survived after being at two very unfortunate events in human history.

The New York Times did as usual write an outstanding Obituary for Mister Tsutomu Yamaguchi.

Which brings me to the new necromancy of the cocktail party set and of the man who has trashed the dead before in the form of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. No doubt Mr. Hitchens will be writing soon about that new necromancy of the rich and elite with whom he most disdainfully must fraternize with because nobody else is as good or as smart or as brilliant as hisself.

On a macro history level, I agree that Truman had to drop the bomb to save American and Japanese casualties. I am talking grunts and soldiers here on both sides. I agree because I try to empathize with the little people on the ground in the micro part of that historic equation. Which makes me wonder if Mr. Hitchens has any empathy at all for mere people.

I have not read the writing part of Mr. Hitchens trashing of Mother Teresa but watched as all us little people can do - some YouTube – a three part documentary “Hell’s Angel” referring to Mother Teresa of Calcutta. His delivery is methodical and well spoken. He delivers script verbally as good as he writes it. As I said before he is an incredibly talented man now working to raise the American literary levels higher. The documentary is the best piece of propaganda I have ever seen. It’s polished Pravda like style delivers me back to those days of us against them in the cold war.

Hitchens’ “us” is atheism and the “them” are the would be saints like Teresa who kissed the asses of the rich, powerful and evil to fund her distribution of crumbs to the poor. I begin to understand the opera of the church and the role of a devil’s advocate in the production like process that makes an official saint of the RC church.

For a moment I almost believed the propaganda about what a monster Teresa is in the eyes of an atheist. Why do people do good things in the name of some abstract or unseen entity called G-d?

I begin to realize why I am uncomfortable with atheism and atheists. When they shed their allegiance to any belief system, many of them expose their lack of empathy towards humanity.

Treating Teresa on a macro level of history suits the author and propagandist and eliminates the little guy out of the equation. That perhaps belief in non-belief, atheism, as a belief and new religion is as totalitarian as any gone before it.

So too on one level of humanity, the rich and famous can make money, war and words of comfort from coffee table magazine writers. They cannot understand “why the other half live”. A troubled conscience perhaps?

I must thank Mister Tsutomu Yamaguchi for living his meager life full of suffering. I must thank him for his efforts late in life to join against nuclear proliferation. I must thank him for his suffering, of wearing bandages for fifteen years to heal the scars of man’s imposition of inhumanity onto humanity (macro onto micro).

I cannot apologize for the human condition and the need by the uncaring elite to wage war at the expense of the “other half” factored out of all present economic and political equations of all so called modern or post modern success.

Rest in peace Mister Yamaguchi. You have done much for human history by your much more than mere life and presence on this planet.

And thank you too Christopher for making me aware of why I believe in God but not religion.

Today, the human equation, and the light within, are still very real to me.

tolerance as a reason in this and every season

People and individuals keep on searching for meaning to life and circumstance in this cold, materialistic, godless, secular global culture.

Some people are writing columns to say that the movie Avatar is a vehicle to sell nature and pantheism. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and not a penis. Sometimes a computer enhanced cartoon or Hollywood fantasy is just a computer enhanced cartoon or just a Hollywood fantasy.

This 24/7/365 knit picking over everything that does not conform to the traditional exceptional American concept of God is not a call to arms to preserve the traditional religionist culture. It is more a shouting in a warehouse, taking inventory, of obsolete aspects of the old Christian belief system before they are carted off onto the trash heap of history.

In my own personal search for a new meaning of the concept of God, I end this year listening to some Christmas Carols like the Brit atheist dilettante Richard Dawkins.

I am more convinced than ever that the current phase of belief in non-belief is wall paper glue filling in the voids of a yet to be printed or determined pastel belief pattern on that wallpaper that will be the norm for decades or centuries to come. Old paper comes down. New paper goes up. The practical and the mundane non-belief is a stop gap glue of many for the moment.

Many years ago as a native tourist investigating every nook and cranny of Independence National Historical Park, I came upon a gem of a colonial building. Back then the only entrance way was down an alley way and into a courtyard. The courtyard with gray paving stones and surrounding brick buildings and simple paned glass windows reminded me of something very plain but European. The RC church of St. Joseph’s was behind a very plain entrance way. Thus I found out that in History, this very pagan Jesuit church was allowed in Quaker Tolerant Pennsylvania in colonial times and still stands in present day downtown Philadelphia. Back then it was probably the only RC church for a hundred miles. It is also a gem inside architecturally in a very subtle kind of Baroque mixed with colonial style interior design.

This story leads me to the Quakers or Society of Friends, or I should say leads me back to Quakers because no matter what your beliefs or ethnic origins, if you grow up in Philly the subtle imprint of a Quaker sub-cultural essence lives on to this day.

This is not an endorsement of the Friends but in reading again in full detail their habits and beliefs I seem to be drawn back to the concept of simplistic beliefs in my personal search for God.

Indeed, the persistent agitator of George Fox against the established COE types is what no doubt got Charles II to settle his debts to the Quaker William Penn’s father’s estate with a land grant to his son a whole ocean away. Best to ship the pesky little religious varmints off to the New World than build more prisons. The Brits had yet to find and settle Australia.

One has to wonder in the recognizable shape of the Quakers that evolved in England, that someone like George Fox was not unaware of the various simplistic aspects of Islam. Perhaps there was a hidden mosque down some London alleyway in days of yore for a native tourist to discover and wonder at. Many books back then about Islam and the Gnostic thing but no hard manuscript evidence, only rumors, on the latter at that time.

I perceive some possible similarities between the two belief systems.

Quakers - the Religious Society of Friends

Among key Quaker beliefs are:

• God is love

• the light of God is in every single person

• a person who lets their life be guided by that light will achieve a full relationship with God

• everyone can have a direct, personal relationship with God without involving a priest or minister

• redemption and the Kingdom of Heaven are to be experienced now, in this world

It is in the inner light thing, this almost Gnostic thing that is a hallmark of Quaker belief.

The Quakers are also not very evangelical, preaching and recruiting to their belief system like some screaming Christian Constantine army press-gang thing.

The inner light of the creative force within endures. You must come to it. It does not necessarily come to you. Indeed, many people raised as a Quaker are not shining examples of this belief system like Richard Nixon as one example. But who is to judge really?

Putting beliefs aside I have to say that for a quiet bunch of unnoticed people in the woodwork so to speak they have founded and maintain many schools, universities – as well as maintain the ground work for doing what some would label as Christian but they themselves do not cling to any faith describing labels or agenda.

The most powerful thing I saw in my youth was a single force, behind the scenes in the widespread opposition to the Vietnam War, in the American Service Friends Committee and its lobbying efforts. At the height of the anger and discord in America around 1972, I remember how the city wanted to widen the road in front of a bunch of nineteenth century brick buildings. The buildings had to come down to make way for the widened street. One of the buildings I believe housed the local AFSC. When vacated I remember a home made sign of about a foot square made of shirt box cardboard and embellished with three simple words in laundry marker or dark crayon – it was tacked over the door of one of these abandoned buildings.

Those words were “Rendered unto Caesar”. Powerful words to make a statement about the then current injustice and unfairness of it all. Those words have lasted in my memory to this day and remind me of the power of simple actions to move governments from the wrong column of history and in to the correct wave energy of human history.

Enough of Philly tales. As this year ends I have two religious belief systems in mind that the world of Christianity, perhaps a dying and or going through a dramatic metamorphosis belief system, might consider in the future shaping of anything to be labelled Christian or Christ-like.

I am mindful of the Quakers and their beliefs and also of the dissident St. Mary’s in Exile Congregation in Brisbane Australia – two places I think I could visit in a service or meeting and where my eccentric at present and eclectic agnostic search for a new meaning or definition of God would be tolerated.

Have a happy and safe new year.

Abstract Concept of God - ACG - a.c.g.

This is a connect the dot thing and about how two totally unrelated subjects have in fact a stake in future global communication.

The first dot happened this morning as I read a piece by Jason Walsh on the Guardian UK news website.

Kick the state out of our bedrooms

Indeed the times, they are a-changin' and it is clear that public opinion on gay marriage is changing with it. When Boyzone singer Stephen Gately died the tabloid press referred to Andy Cowles, as his husband. It was slightly jarring at first but we'll get used to it: the sky didn't fall, thousands of men didn't abandon their wives and head down to the local gay club and although there was something a war of words on the internet … well, who cares?...

Which led to this sentence which leads me back to the topic theme.

The fiercest opposition to gay marriage comes from conservative Christians who see marriage as a sacred bond between a man and a woman before God.

Suddenly I realize how so many of us are confused by terms already in usage, terms in transit and terms yet to be born. And in a present and future global sense.

The article is about how a term such as “husband” is appropriate and needs to understood by all as in a gay relationship. This cradle but not to the grave homophobe has had his share of uncomfortable moments in life seeing gays kiss and or hold hands in public. It takes some getting used to but get over it. Who cares? Who cares about the private lives of other people?

Enough with the gay stuff already. The second quote about alpha-male christians leads to how I have tried to pull my thoughts together about atheism and agnosticism and a whole range of terms I and or you may not be aware of or might need to get used as terms.

“Marriage as a sacred bond between a man and a women before God”

God? What is that? The founding fathers, born in the Enlightenment, were comfortable in their own skins with God being remote and creative (Deism) or God being up front and personal (Theism).

In an interview by Australian Atheist Cameron Reilly with Father Peter Kennedy of St. Mary’s in Exile Brisbane, Reilly kept using the term “Anthropomorphic” – a mouth full - which means giving God an attribute of humanity as in a white haired guy in the sky and or “personal god” concept.

Getting back to the marriage definition used by fanatical christians with marriage, forming a sacred bond, as in spoken vows of a man and a women “before God”. It struck me how God is an Abstract Concept. God might be real in a spirit form but he, she, or it is not visible in this world. The majority opinion and the majority assumption that God is a word or term that can stand alone in understanding or communication is fading with that religious majority into a future global minority opinion.

I came to this new term Abstract Concept of God (ACG) (a.c.g.) to bridge some gaps of understanding in our merging world cultures. God is not real. God may exist but when people are taking vows or swearing oaths they are taking those vows and or oaths to an Abstract Concept of God (to an abstract concept called "God").

Helping me along in my evolving thoughts and understanding about what is real and what is not real is my study recently of Atheism. One of the persons helping recently is the late great artist George Carlin, in a filmed comedy routine from 1999.

I do not invite you to see the video below if you are not curious about atheism. I was a bit squimish when I saw the same routine on HBO a year or two ago. But gradually I have come around, can look and laugh at some of the cultural absurdities and superstitions that still languish in this so called modern civilized culture.

In a way my fear of atheism has done an about turn much like my about turn in terms of supporting 100% human rights for gays and all other human beings on this planet, as well as for those in belief or as non-believers.

Gone are the days of Madelyn Murray O’Hair – angry and reactive atheists to a bad religious experience – and going forward with the young who have not experienced the medieval experience of religion and their atheism is – what is all this “bullshit” about religion and God stuff (?).

The concept about assuming that the word God alone is enough in the public square to express yourself is changing. The concept as described above about forming a sacred bond by taking vows before God is perhaps turning into the perjorative at the moment no matter how much cash and Public Relations reinforcement of religious medieval concepts is going on in the present world.

The majority POV about vows before God may be the minority POV in a future global culture and taking “vows before an ACG (abstract concept of god)” may be the politically correct way to phrase that sentence in a decade or two.

(Warning - there is a lot of street profanity in the video below.)