God Bless America But Not Ted Cruz

"Pastor" Rafael Cruz - 1986
"All I want are Tits and World Domination" Ted Cruz Video - 1986

God Bless America But Not Ted Cruz

I don’t know what “Evangelicals” means in Iowa. But they are believers in their imaginary friend in the sky. And if their children want to be Agnostic or Secular, their children will be ostracized and shunned. That sounds like Islam with secular laws in Muslim countries making it a crime or a death sentence to change religions or choose not to believe. That really sucks.

So in my point of view, the Muslims pray five times a day to their imaginary god thing. They sound quite stupid to me in my western civilization mindset. A lot like Iowa Evangelicals. They too sound stupid to me in my western civilized mindset. 

Getting back to Evangelicals in Iowa who are mindless fundamentalist Christians who believe every word in the very confusing contradictory passages of the Bible which is a combination of both the Hebrew and the Greek Testaments.

Ted Cruz, his political campaign has just declared "christian jihad" on the Trump Campaign in order to gain power and world domination, something Ted Cruz has been brainwashed all his life as something he wants as the goal of his miserable nasty pointless life.

And of course, Ted has been led by his grifter Gypsy father who claims to have started in Cuban as a person. But with a half century wall erected around Cuba, there is no way to check out the life story of the grifter “Pastor” father Rafael Cruz Senior etc. Ted’s real name is Rafael Cruz Junior btw.

The old man has been going around for years as pastor of a fictitious church in Carrollton Texas that is only a mail drop at some strip store mailing shop. Rafael Cruz is however a paid consultant of the right wing think tank Heritage Foundation who sees no conflict of mixing politics with religion just like those other barbarians and enemies of civilization, the Muslims.

If I was a full believer and merely Agnostic, I would call Pastor Cruz satanic and or of Satan in terms of the evil he preaches against races and immigrants and talks to religious groups all the time about using churches as data bases and delivery points of bodies to vote on and in elections, in clear violation of separation of church and state and non-profit tax laws.

Know your enemy without. Know your enemy within.

God bless America but not Ted Cruz. 

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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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The Nones Have It – Belief

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/03/27/2531910/were-steadily-losing-our-religion.html#storylink=cpy

The nation’s religious composition – as revealed in a recent presentation by Luis Lugo of the Pew Research Center – is changing. In 2012, America ceased to be a majority Protestant country – the result, mainly, of a decline in the numbers of mainline Protestants (though there have been smaller losses among white evangelicals as well). Catholicism is holding its own with a stable 22 percent of the public, but its ethnic composition has shifted dramatically – about half of all Catholics under 40 are Latino. 

 One group, however, has swelled: those with no religious affiliation, also known as “nones” (as in “none of the above”). In the 1950s, this was about 2 percent of the population. In the 1970s, it was about 7 percent. Today, it is close to 20 percent. These gains can be found in all regions of the country, including the South. The trend is particularly pronounced among whites, among the young and among men. 

 Not all the nones, it is worth pointing out, are secular. Only about 30 percent of this group – 6 percent of the public – are atheists or agnostics. The rest of the nones describe themselves as indifferent to religion or as “nothing in particular.” Sixty-four percent of the nones, however, say they believe in God or a universal spirit with “absolute certainty.” Even 9 percent of atheists and agnostics – defying both dogma and the dictionary – report themselves absolutely convinced of God’s existence. About equal proportions of the religiously unaffiliated (19 percent) and the affiliated (18 percent) report having “seen or been in the presence of a ghost.” 

 So the nones are united, not by reading Richard Dawkins or by any particular set of theological beliefs but by a complete lack of attachment to institutional religion.

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Agnostic Spoken Here

Agnostic is spoken here.

It is not the only language. I welcome differing points of view. But after something like a quarter century search for meaning and life and purpose of being, I have come to the conclusion that nobody really knows when it comes to the concept of “God” – who or what that three letter word really represents or means.

As you may have noticed I did a visual change on the blog cover overhead.

The dragon is not demonic, merely my Chinese Zodiac sign in green, a life color.  My image concession to the growing global culture of the human race.

I have also included a phrase I have used for many years.

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

Hardly McShea’s Law or Logic formula on Agnosticism but a start.

I do not think that Agnosticism is half-assed Atheism because once an Atheist declares “there is not God”, he or she is not proclaiming it in a vacuum but in a functioning multi-dimensional world that needs some explaining sometime, somewhere from a scientific point of view at least.

And to explain God in terms of centuries old myth and superstitions is moot in the Twenty-first century of a common global era of the human race.

Also, I do not like a lot of the Atheists out there in the public square who seem so loud and vulgar in their defense of something that is both of a quasi-religious and secular nature.

Most Atheists I perceive to be first and foremost anti-religion perhaps due to bad past religious life experiences. The issue of God or Creator gets caught up many times entangled in that personal experience thing.

Atheism per se has gotten a bad rap through the centuries because it has always been a political term to quash any political dissent within the ruling theocracies which I think have been a majority throughout human history, both helping and hurting human history along the road to evolution of the species to bigger and better things.

That an extension of the tribe or clan has been the city state and the official party line, the official religion and or god has always been the local glue that holds the whole mess together at any given time locally along the human race timeline. 

That God for a lack of a better word is a metaphor, real at least to me, matching reality to a point and not unlike that of my childhood imaginary friend.

I think that when people say they believe in God, they are really saying that they conform to the local standards and enjoy the myth coming off of stained glass or the printed page and not necessarily in relation to total reality.

That looking at Dawkins Atheist Forum dissolve into chaos and dogmatic warfare says to me that Atheism is too on a certain level just another religion full of useless dogma.

As I have stated here on more than one occasion, I am Areligionist first, without religion and or dogma, before I am second Agnostic, with doubt about all popular religious cultural myths. I simply do not know.

That if anything, I am a closeted Quaker, not an official member of that party, but believe in the specialness of my own personal being and or personal God within aka the divine spark within.

Seeing the political scape descend into madness is seeing too much money and too much religion in politics these days.

That must change. Theologies do not work in the face of technology. Reality and myth conflict and reality is probable in most cases as opposed to any myth.

I remain a Cultural Christian because I believe in the basic teachings of Jesus. I do not however believe in his so-called divinity. 

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What do you know about God?

An interesting article about stats and who knows what etc. about God and religion.  The numbers are an interesting insight into the whole complex matter of ideas and realities regarding religion.

Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says

A majority of Protestants, for instance, couldn't identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the survey, released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the meaning of their church's central ritual, incorrectly saying that the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are intended to merely symbolize the body and blood of Christ, not actually become them.


Atheists and agnostics — those who believe there is no God or who aren't sure — were more likely to answer the survey's questions correctly. Jews and Mormons ranked just below them in the survey's measurement of religious knowledge — so close as to be statistically tied.

So why would an atheist know more about religion than a Christian?

An Agnostic’s Right to Doubt

I may be taking this quote out of the context of the author’s original meaning in that I apply it to religious thinking. I have no doubt that in their day, the myths (stories) of Generals Moses, Constantine or Mohammed had a certain relevance within the context of the time and place originated.

But today is today. Give a guy a break. I have the right to doubt in the myths of the past. It is a right of belief and a right to belief in the private and public realm. It is a universal human right.

"Everyone has the right to doubt everything as often as he pleases and the duty to do it at least once. No way of looking at things is too sacred to be reconsidered. No way of doing things is beyond improvement."

— Edward De Bono (The Use of Lateral Thinking)

Nasty Jesus and the Jesus Sarcasm Seminar

"I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword" (Gospel of Matthew 10:34)

I find it amazing how with all the Jesus Seminar type dissection of the New Testament in this decline or downside of historic Christianity that nobody has ever suggested that maybe some of the remarks, stories, parables were the hidden message of a radical revolutionary that said "I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword" (Gospel of Matthew 10:34).

Maybe there were hidden messages too in Saint Paul when he said to obey civil authority like maybe his jail keepers were standing over the fence listening to his courtyard conversations while he was under house arrest in Rome.

And maybe, just maybe, Jesus had a dark Yiddish (way before Yiddish) sense of humor when he said things like turn the other cheek or love your neighbor. Maybe he was being sarcastic in a number of times and places that memory and oral history does not accurately translate to us in the written word.

Maybe “turn your cheek” or “love your neighbor” was not always verbatim and literal for Holy Man/Revolutionary Jesus.

Though it is a relief to think that Jesus was more human and capable of hate towards the Romans and their stooges in the Temple crowd of lackey priests paid for by the Romans.

I ran into my friend Paul Erland’s story of Jesus and the demons and the swine (Mark 5:1-20) on Facebook.

Turning Swine into Water

Paul, who I would rate as a militant Agnostic is the person from which I originally heard the above Matthew quote in an essay. I also think I misread that essay and started this blog as a reaction. In a way, I like agnostics much better than bully atheists who seem to know it all and in particular, Hitchens, Rushdie, Dawkins come to mind.

Anyway, the passage of taking demons out of a man and putting them into pigs and then sending 2000 of them into the sea seems a passage that most pastors take literally in a modern age and totally skip any hatred that militant, nasty and possible hate filled Jesus had toward the Romans – the gang that eventually killed him.

Is there a Jesus Sarcasm Seminar going on anywhere I wonder??? Can I join?

ATHEIST - AGNOSTIC - ARELIGIONIST

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A T H E I S T

A G N O S T I C

A R E L I G I O N I S T

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(ar-e-lig-ion-ist)

The term Cultural Christian means a lot of things these days. Looking through a search of the subject on the Internet, I believe the fundamentalists have out blogged the day and anybody or anything that calls themselves a Cultural Christian is going to Hell with Richard Dawkins, the Brit, famous first for being an Atheist and second for being a scientist.

Anyway I have a fall back plan. Since I have written a lot about my quest for a new definition of God in this emerging Global culture that is increasingly less theistic and more materialistic or even humanistic, a new term for me is in order.

The title shows three terms, two of which already have definitions and are in the lexicon on the language.

Atheist is broken down into A and Theist, meaning without theism or denial of the traditional concept of God.

Agnosticism is broken down into A and Gnostic, meaning without knowledge and implies a doubt about the concept of God. Also means that there is no proof of God as in a modern scientific approach to any theory.

Areligionist is broken down into A and Religionist, meaning without religion. A religionist is one addicted to a need to have a rulebook on the side of the Theist issue.

Since I do not see anything in a dictionary yet, let me add my preferred pronunciation of the word as (ar-e-lig-ion-ist) as opposes the Atheist sounding pronunciation of (A- re-lig-ion-ist) – don’t want to get swept up anymore in the Dawkins heretic burning phenomenon from the right.

Being Areligionist means not believing in any man made rule book about the God thing, the definition of which I am still plotting.

Religionist fanatics like Saul of Tarsus are part of the present failure of Christianity along with the emperor god Constantine’s hijacking of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to help redecorate his palace, on a coffee table so to speak, in Constantinople. If he really was a Christian, which I doubt, would he not have named the greatest and newest city in his empire Jesusopolis or Christianopolis for his new found god and not for himself?

There are as many rule books and searches for spirituality and or God as there are people on the planet. We no longer have to be stuck with “sacred” writings written in tents or caves or Roman Empire army barracks.

Time for a change in the way humanity approaches the sacred as free individuals instead of as in shackled groups, tribes, clans, packs, as in the past.

Obama Overtones on Faith and Religion

Caught this item on CNN last week. Did you catch it too?

How Obama's favorite theologian shaped his first year in office

In the summer of 1943, when Adolf Hitler's armies marched unchecked across Europe, a pastor in a remote New England village decided to write a prayer.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," he began, "the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

It is now known as the Serenity Prayer.

In grade school this prayer was on back of a holy card of St. Francis of Assisi. I think the nuns even told me that St. Francis wrote it. Well perhaps not, if documentable current history can be depended upon.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Obama’s minimalism in politics, if it is such, matches something to his approach to faith and religion. Faith and religion can be two separate things. Perhaps too his seeming minimalism in the hard art of politics might also extend into the realm of agnostic in that of his religious beliefs.

He apparently is impressed by the history and words of:

His name is Reinhold Niebuhr, and he was a Protestant pastor in the mid-20th century whose words tended to unsettle people, not offer comfort.

Niebuhr is getting attention again because he has a fan in the Oval Office.

I never heard of him before I read this article of a man that many including Martin Luther King Jr. were fond of quoting.

Obama is said to attend church services at Camp David in a military chapel and out of the eye of the media. His motorcade of thirty something vehicles is somewhat embarrassing if he shows up at a formal church setting in Washington D.C.. He has done the church thing very little. He has been to St. John’s Episcopal Church, the “Presidents’ Church”, across the street on Lafayette Square before the Inaugural and on I believe at Easter. The man’s faith and the public display of it he has been kept largely private.

In the fishbowl world of the presidency and with the Pharisee Media Hypocrites ready to equate any religious overtones as within the legitimate forum of politics, I believe he has backed off in that sense since the Reverend Wright thing and Rev. Wright’s old fashioned and perhaps divisive rhetoric that does on occasion mix politics with religion.

So there we have it, our CEO in chief is fond of a New England preacher and some of his writings including the “serenity prayer”.

Niebuhr was a blunt critic of morally complacent Christians. He thought the church was full of idealists who believed that progress was inevitable and that love alone would ultimately conquer injustice, some Niebuhr scholars say.

"He said there was a difference between being a 'fool for Christ' and a plain damn fool," says Richard Crouter, author of the upcoming book "Reinhold Niebuhr: On Politics, Religion and Christian Faith."

It sounds like a book worth reading. I invite you to read the full article above.

SHANAS – S.H.A.N.A.S. – Secular, Humanist, Atheist, Non-believer, Agnostic, Skeptic

The road to a true global future is indeed full of many skeptics and skeptical beliefs.

Perhaps it takes time for global reality to set in. Myself I would rather look at the tools available in global communication and set a focus point for others to gather at and to begin a lot of restoring of the human spirit and the human culture after thousands of years of religious bigotry and superstition.

My quest to assert my minimalist Christian beliefs as a Cultural Secular Christian is to have a place at the table of communication and not let some religious or PR hack determine what is best or acceptable for me to believe in.

We all believe and feel billions of different things. We are however bound together by blood and DNA on this fragile planet in space.

As such I termed the word SHANAS as a focal point – focus point as a label to follow, fill out in breath and come back in retort, an umbrella of beliefs and non-beliefs, in reaction to those thousands of years of abuse and superstition that the human race has endured thus far.

We all want to change the world. Perhaps I am too much in a rush to perfection for our human race. The past seems to cling to too many negatives and redundancies. The future or any so-called new world order should be determined by input by all mankind. Part of the future is trying to determine what to jettison from the past. It is no easy task on an individual or on a global scale. I value individual input rather than institutional input.

I took the words most common in these outside cultures and philosophies at present and forming from ideas that gravitate toward similar but not exact goals. Secular, Humanists, Atheists, Non-believers, Agnostics and Skeptics should focus perhaps under one label to ease the path to future communication and integration of a durable global matrix of local and global issues in the present and immerging Global Reality. The energies of these groupings do not seem to be set in stone so much as that energy can turn into quest for a new horizon and or enlightenment for all.

SHANAS – S.H.A.N.A.S. – Secular, Humanist, Atheist, Non-believer, Agnostic, Skeptic – as a label is a start.

Whatever forms in reality in terms of labels in the future will form by common consensus and not by any one SHANAS member of alternate belief systems. And as opposed to the obsolete superstitions and religions plaguing the present world. I want people to start thinking and acting globally and – in a Secular Humanist fashion of sorts.

Christopher Hitchens, a famous atheist, complains that we need a new Age of Enlightenment – well that age is here – it has arrived – it is time for individuals more so than any one or many institutions to bring forth the light within humanity to the forefront of all human existence.

This is the dawning of a new human age.

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.