texas gop opposes teaching of critical thinking skills....,

The Colbert Report

WaPo | I thought I’d heard enough about the Texas Republican Party’s platform that rejects the teaching of critical thinking skills until I heard Stephen Colbert’s take on it.

I wrote about this recently here, quoting from the platform:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

After this was ridiculed, Texas GOP Communications Director Chris Elam told TPM.com that it was a mistake and that opposition to “critical thinking” wasn’t supposed to be part of the platform. Since a party convention approved the platform, it can’t just be dropped, he said. Sure thing.

Colbert returned to “The Colbert Report” from vacation this week and couldn’t resist taking a hilarious shot at this as part of a piece that is described on the show’s website like this: “The minds of young people are being poisoned by knowledge, but thankfully Texas is the Large Hadron Collider of denying science.”

in u.s. 46% hold creationist view of human origins

Gallup | Despite the many changes that have taken place in American society and culture over the past 30 years, including new discoveries in biological and social science, there has been virtually no sustained change in Americans' views of the origin of the human species since 1982. The 46% of Americans who today believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years is little changed from the 44% who believed this 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question.

More broadly, some 78% of Americans today believe that God had a hand in the development of humans in some way, just slightly less than the percentage who felt this way 30 years ago.

All in all, there is no evidence in this trend of a substantial movement toward a secular viewpoint on human origins.

Most Americans are not scientists, of course, and cannot be expected to understand all of the latest evidence and competing viewpoints on the development of the human species. Still, it would be hard to dispute that most scientists who study humans agree that the species evolved over millions of years, and that relatively few scientists believe that humans began in their current form only 10,000 years ago without the benefit of evolution. Thus, almost half of Americans today hold a belief, at least as measured by this question wording, that is at odds with the preponderance of the scientific literature.

remember this as you listen to those seeking elective office...,

Video - Complete Thanksgiving Faith and Family Forum in Iowa

Guardian | In most pre-modern cultures, there were two recognised ways of attaining truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were crucial and each had its particular sphere of competence. Logos ("reason; science") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to control our environment and function in the world. It had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external realities. But logos could not assuage human grief or give people intimations that their lives had meaning. For that they turned to mythos, an early form of psychology, which dealt with the more elusive aspects of human experience.

Stories of heroes descending to the underworld were not regarded as primarily factual but taught people how to negotiate the obscure regions of the psyche. In the same way, the purpose of a creation myth was therapeutic; before the modern period no sensible person ever thought it gave an accurate account of the origins of life. A cosmology was recited at times of crisis or sickness, when people needed a symbolic influx of the creative energy that had brought something out of nothing. Thus the Genesis myth, a gentle polemic against Babylonian religion, was balm to the bruised spirits of the Israelites who had been defeated and deported by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar during the sixth century BCE. Nobody was required to "believe" it; like most peoples, the Israelites had a number of other mutually-exclusive creation stories and as late as the 16th century, Jews thought nothing of making up a new creation myth that bore no relation to Genesis but spoke more directly to their tragic circumstances at that time.

Above all, myth was a programme of action. When a mythical narrative was symbolically re-enacted, it brought to light within the practitioner something "true" about human life and the way our humanity worked, even if its insights, like those of art, could not be proven rationally. If you did not act upon it, it would remain as incomprehensible and abstract – like the rules of a board game, which seem impossibly convoluted, dull and meaningless until you start to play.

Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.

But during the modern period, scientific logos became so successful that myth was discredited, the logos of scientific rationalism became the only valid path to truth, and Newton and Descartes claimed it was possible to prove God's existence, something earlier Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians had vigorously denied. Christians bought into the scientific theology, and some embarked on the doomed venture of turning their faith's mythos into logos.

It was during the late 17th century, as the western conception of truth became more notional, that the word "belief" changed its meaning. Previously, bileve meant "love, loyalty, commitment". It was related to the Latin libido and used in the King James Bible to translate the Greek pistis ("trust; faithfulness; involvement"). In demanding pistis, therefore, Jesus was asking for commitment not credulity: people must give everything to the poor, follow him to the end, and commit totally to the coming Kingdom.

By the late 17th century, however, philosophers and scientists had started to use "belief" to mean an intellectual assent to a somewhat dubious proposition. We often assume "modern" means "superior", and while this is true of science and technology, our religious thinking is often undeveloped. In the past, people understood it was unwise to confuse mythos with logos, but today we read the mythoi of scripture with an unparalleled literalism, and in "creation science" we have bad science and inept religion. The question is: how can we extricate ourselves from the religious cul-de-sac we entered about 300 years ago?

no surprise there's a very strong correlation...,

Medicalxpress | Intuition may lead people toward a belief in the divine and help explain why some people have more faith in God than others, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

In a series of studies, researchers at Harvard University found that people with a more intuitive thinking style tend to have stronger beliefs in God than those with a more reflective style. Intuitive thinking means going with one's first instinct and reaching decisions quickly based on automatic cognitive processes. Reflective thinking involves the questioning of first instinct and consideration of other possibilities, thus allowing for counterintuitive decisions.

"We wanted to explain variations in belief in God in terms of more basic cognitive processes," researcher Amitai Shenhav said. "Some say we believe in God because our intuitions about how and why things happen lead us to see a divine purpose behind ordinary events that don't have obvious human causes. This led us to ask whether the strength of an individual's beliefs is influenced by how much they trust their natural intuitions versus stopping to reflect on those first instincts."

The research was published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. The study from the Harvard University Psychology Department was conducted by Shenhav, a doctoral student; post-doctoral fellow David Rand, PhD; and associate professor Joshua Greene, PhD.

In the first part of the study, 882 U.S. adults, with a mean age of 33 and consisting of 64 percent women, completed online surveys about their belief in God before taking a cognitive reflection test. The test had three math problems with incorrect answers that seemed intuitive. For example, one question stated: "A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?" The automatic or intuitive answer is 10 cents, but the correct answer is 5 cents. Participants who had more incorrect answers showed a greater reliance on intuition than reflection in their thinking style.

people pay the taxes, not an entity the corporation itself

Video - Sarah Palin still looking good, still making no sense...,

ThinkProgress | Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) kicked off a bus tour of Iowa at the state fairgrounds where Romney had stumped the day before. ThinkProgress asked Palin if she agreed with Romney’s belief that corporations are people. Tossing aside previous efforts to position herself as a populist leader, Palin sided with corporations, declaring, “Mitt Romney was right.”

KEYES: Governor, are corporations people?

PALIN: The people pay the taxes. It’s not an entity — the corporation itself — that pays the taxes. It’s the people who pay the taxes. So Mitt Romney was right.

jesus loves nukes...,

Telegraph | For 20 years the course on “Christian Just War Theory” was taught by chaplains at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to those who would turn the key should World War III break out.

The training, which used passages from the Bible and religious imagery to demonstrate the moral justification for atomic warfare, has now been suspended.

The Air Force acted after receiving an inquiry from Truthout, a news website which first broke the story.

A PowerPoint presentation which was part of the course had consisted of 43 slides which included references to Biblical figures like Abraham and John the Baptist, and paintings of the Visigoths attacking Rome in AD410.

Instructors quoted St Augustine’s just cause for war, telling them it was right “to avenge or to avert evil, to protect the innocent and restore moral and social order.”

They also recounted how, in the Book of Genesis, Abraham had organised an army to rescue Lot, and how there were “Old Testament believers who engaged in war in a righteous way.” Officers were also told that in Judges, God is “motivating judges to fight and deliver Israel from foreign oppressors,” and that there was “no pacifistic sentiment in mainstream Jewish history.”

In the New Testament, they were told, Jesus used the Roman centurion as a “positive illustration of faith.” One slide read: “Revelation 19:11 Jesus Christ is the mighty warrior.”

The course literature also quoted Werner von Braun, the leading German rocket scientist who went on to work for the United States after the Second World War, saying that it was a “moral decision” to surrender his technology to the US.

Von Braun said: “We felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.”

Before the the course was stopped 31 nuclear missile launch officers, including Protestants and Roman Catholics, had complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group that campaigns for the separation of church and state.

Its founder Mikey Weinstein said the officers were being told that “under fundamentalist Christian doctrine, war is a good thing”.

He said the officers found that “disgusting.” Mr Weinstein said: “The United States Air Force was promoting a particular brand of right wing fundamentalist Christianity.

“The main essence was that war is a natural part of the human experience and it’s something that is favoured by this particular perspective of the New Testament.”

David Smith, spokesman for the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command, said ethics courses were “especially important” for nuclear missile launch officers.

But he added: “Our commander here reviewed the course and decided immediately that it was not appropriate for what we want to do.

“The use of Bible passages and other elements was just inappropriate. The military is made up of people from all walks of life, all faiths.” However, critics accused the Air Force of bowing to political correctness.

Commander Daniel McKay, a retired US Navy chaplain, said: “Why is it inappropriate to give our people guidelines that have withstood the test of time, to give us moral guidance?

“History will prove that if you stay true to God’s wisdom, it will serve us well and it has served us well.”

fear of islam and plan for war....,

NYTimes | The Norwegian man charged Saturday with a pair of attacks in Oslo that killed at least 92 people left behind a detailed manifesto outlining his preparations and calling for a Christian war to defend Europe against the threat of Muslim domination, according to Norwegian and American officials familiar with the investigation.

As stunned Norwegians grappled with the deadliest attack in the country since World War II, a portrait began to emerge of the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, 32. The police identified him as a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, while acquaintances described him as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.

“We are not sure whether he was alone or had help,” a police official, Roger Andresen, said at a televised news conference. “What we know is that he is right wing and a Christian fundamentalist.”

In the 1,500-page manifesto, posted on the Web hours before the attacks, Mr. Breivik recorded a day-by-day diary of months of planning for the attacks, and claimed to be part of a small group that intended to “seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda.”

He predicted a conflagration that would kill or injure more than a million people, adding, “The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come.”

The manifesto was signed Andrew Berwick, an Anglicized version of his name. A former American government official briefed on the case said investigators believed the manifesto was Mr. Breivik’s work.

The manifesto, entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” equates liberalism and multiculturalism with “cultural Marxism,” which the document says is destroying European Christian civilization.

The document also describes a secret meeting in London in April 2002 to reconstitute the Knights Templar, a Crusader military order. It says the meeting was attended by nine representatives of eight European countries, evidently including Mr. Breivik, with an additional three members unable to attend, including a “European-American.”

The document does not name the attendees or say whether they were aware of Mr. Breivik’s planned attacks, though investigators presumably will now try to determine if the people exist and what their connection is to Mr. Breivik.

Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, said the manifesto bears an eerie resemblance to those of Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders, though from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view. Like Mr. Breivik’s manuscript, the major Qaeda declarations have detailed accounts of the Crusades, a pronounced sense of historical grievance and calls for apocalyptic warfare to defeat the religious and cultural enemy.

a right-wing christian fundamentalist

CNN | As Norway struggles to come to terms with its greatest loss of life in decades, all eyes are on the man charged in the explosion in central Oslo and the deadly shooting rampage at a youth camp.

While police have not officially named him, Norwegian television and newspaper reports have identified the suspect as 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, of Norwegian origin.

A picture is emerging, gleaned from official sources and social media, of a right-wing Christian fundamentalist who may have had an issue with Norway's multi-cultural society.

Norwegian and international news outlets have run photographs of a blond man with blue-green eyes and chiseled features, dressed in a preppy style.

A victim who was shot during the attack at the youth camp on Utoya island told CNN Saturday that he had seen pictures of Breivik taken from what is believed to be his Facebook page and shown on NRK and TV2. The victim said he recognized the man from the news reports as the gunman.

Breivik is a member of the Oslo Pistol Club and has three weapons registered in his name, according to leading Norwegian newspaper VG, citing Norway's official weapons register. They are a Glock pistol, a rifle and a shotgun, VG reported.

A post in Breivik's name on an online forum, Document.no, from December 2009, talks about non-Muslim teenagers being "in an especially precarious situation with regards to being harassed by Islamic youth."

"I know of many hundred occasions where non-Muslims have been robbed, beaten up and harassed by Islamic gangs," the post reads. "I had a best friend between the ages of 12-17 who was a Pakistani, so I was one of the many protected, cool 'potatoes' that had protection. But this also made me see the hypocrisy up close and personal and made me nauseous."

A Twitter account attributed to Breivik by Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has only one message, dated July 17. "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who has only interests," it says, adapting a quote from 19th-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill.

magical-thinking brand management...,

The Atlantic | Michele Bachmann is practically synonymous with political controversy, and if the 2008 presidential election is any guide, the conservative Lutheran church she belonged to for many years is likely to add another chapter due to the nature of its beliefs--such as its assertion, explained and footnoted on this website, that the Roman Catholic Pope is the Antichrist.

Bachmann was a longtime member of the Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church in Stillwater, Minn., which belongs to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), a council of churches founded in 1850 that today comprises about 400,000 people. WELS is the most conservative of the major Lutheran church organizations, known for its strict adherence to the writings of Martin Luther, the German theologian who broke with the Catholic Church and launched the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. This includes endorsing Luther's statements about the papacy. From the WELS "Doctrinal Statement on the Antichrist":

Since Scripture teaches that the Antichrist would be revealed and gives the marks by which the Antichrist is to be recognized, and since this prophecy has been clearly fulfilled in the history and development of the Roman Papacy, it is Scripture which reveals that the Papacy is the Antichrist.


During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama's relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright nearly derailed his quest for the Democratic nomination after video surfaced of Wright's extreme pronouncements. Similarly, the views of Bachmann's church toward the papacy--which are well outside the mainstream of modern political discourse--could pose a problem as she pursues the Republican nomination.

Seeking to better understand WELS theology and how voters should regard it, I called the Rev. Marcus Birkholz of Salem Lutheran Church in Stillwater. When I identified myself, he hung up. Turning the other cheek, I called WELS and had slightly better luck. While I didn't get to speak to a pastor, as I'd hoped, Joel Hochmuth, the communications director, did his best to oblige. On the matter of the Antichrist, he said, "Some people have this vision of a little devil running around with horns and red pointy ears. Luther was clear that by 'Antichrist' [he meant] anybody who puts himself up in place of Christ. Luther never bought the idea of the Pope being God's voice in today's world. He believed Scripture is God's word." Hochmuth hastened to add that despite the lengthy doctrinal statement, the belief that the Pope is the Antichrist "has never been one of our driving principles."

Hochmuth also revealed that Bachmann is no longer a member of the WELS congregation. "I do know that she has requested a release of her membership," he said, adding that she took the unusual step of formally requesting that release in writing. "She has not been an active member of our fellowship during the last year." Hochmuth wouldn't speculate on whether her presidential ambitions factored in this decision -- the nation's 70 million Catholics (who lean Republican) might not respond kindly to the Pope-as-Antichrist stuff -- but he did emphasize that "it's not something you're going to hear preached from our pulpits every Sunday."

like scientology - tanakh and koran are total frauds as well...,

HuffPo | Since the early years of Christianity, various myths, legends, and even conspiracy theories about the origins of the Bible have enjoyed wide circulation. The discovery in recent decades of many books that were not accepted into the Christian canon has only added to this speculation, spawning numerous best-sellers and television programs. Though the number of theories has grown, however, the three most popular are sufficiently well defined that we can consider them as we might various options on a multiple-choice quiz. So read carefully and then make your selection.

The Big Three

A: Holy Dictation. Promoted by conservative Christians, this view stresses the inerrancy -- that is, the factual accuracy in all matters of faith, history, and science -- of the Bible. Authors, in the grip of the Holy Spirit, received a divine revelation directly from God that they transcribed without error. So while the biblical authors may have written in their own voice and style, the contents of their compositions were nevertheless divinely inspired and controlled. For this reason, there are no errors of any kind in the Bible; hence, if the Bible says the world was created in seven days then, indeed, it was created in seven days.

B: Imperial Decree. Popularized by historical works like The Gnostic Gospels and fictional books like The Da Vinci Code, this view suggests that the official and final contents of the Bible were established by ecclesial councils ordered by Emperor Constantine and his successors. The intent of these councils was both to provide theological unity to the fledgling Christian empire and to stamp out the rise of feminism and other movements in the heavily patriarchal and increasingly orthodox early Christian church. According to Elaine Pagels, divergent theologies like Gnosticism were a threat to the unity and power of the imperial-backed ecclesial authorities, while for Dan Brown there existed a conspiracy to suppress the "true" story of Jesus' romantic relationship with Mary Magdalene, their unrecognized child, and Mary Magdalene's significant influence in the early church.

C: Forgeries & Falsehoods. Who wrote the Bible? All too often, this view suggests, it wasn't who the actual authors purported to be. Rather, much of the New Testament was written either by persons whose identity remains irrecoverably anonymous or by frauds impersonating famous and powerful Christians of an earlier generation. While the gospels represent the former case, many of the letters attributed to the Apostle Paul as well as those attributed to Peter and others represent the latter. As Bart Ehrman has recently argued, the checkered history of the composition of these books undermines the integrity of the New Testament as a whole.

So what do you think -- did you find a satisfactory answer? If not, it will help to remember that multiple-choice tests often offer a fourth choice, "D: None of the Above." As it happens, that choice would be the better answer for this question, as each of the first three possibilities is flawed. For instance, while Mormons have a story that describes the divine transmission of their holy book, Christians by and large have rarely made such claims. In fact, the theory of inerrancy -- a word never used in the Bible -- was only coined only a century ago by fundamentalist Christians seeking to defend the Bible from recent discoveries about its historical origins and fallible conclusions in the realms of history and science.

real christianity is still illegal in 2011

Guardian | An understanding of the medieval cult of martyrs' relics can help open our minds to the otherness of beliefs in today's world. Shortly after I entered my convent in 1962, the entire community processed to the altar one Sunday evening to kiss a reliquary that, I was told, contained a fragment of Jesus's swaddling clothes. In those early days I was ready to swallow anything but I balked at this. It seemed as preposterous as the claim of Chaucer's Pardoner that his pillowcase was a piece of the Virgin Mary's veil.

For similar reasons, I suspect, some may feel that the new exhibition at the British Museum, Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, is not for them. In recent years the museum has performed the immensely important task of helping the public to appreciate cultures, such as Babylonia, Shia Iran and Afghanistan, that play a critical role in contemporary politics; next year, there will be a major exhibition on the Hajj. But unless we come to terms with our own past, we cannot hope to understand the beliefs and enthusiasms of others.

Far from being an unfortunate eruption of popular religion, historians such as Peter Brown have taught us that the cult of relics was in fact a serious attempt to explore the full dimensions of our humanity; surprisingly, it has much to teach us today. A ritualised journey to a holy place, where pilgrims encounter the divine, has been an important practice in nearly all religious traditions. The Hajj exhibition will show how crucial the pilgrimage to Mecca has been to Muslim spirituality, and Treasures of Heaven explores the development of Christian pilgrimage.

Because Christians were persecuted by the Roman imperial authorities for nearly 300 years, they were unable to build their own cult centres. But by the time Christianity was legalised in 312, they had begun to locate the divine in other human beings, a controversial idea that inspired intense debates about the divinity of Jesus. If a mere man could embody the sacred, what were the implications for the rest of us? "God became human," replied Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, "so that humans can become divine." Nobody had revealed this divine dimension of humanity more clearly than the martyrs, who were revered as "other Christs" because they had followed Jesus to their death. Their tombs became the new Christian holy places.

bishopricks

Egodeath | It was important to the institutional, hierarchical, empire-affiliated and profit-driven state church to literalize Jesus and the pseudo-historical understanding of the mythic allegory. The church's exclusive monopoly and rule would have been harmed, were Christ taken to be mystic-state allegory, which is universally available without a hierarchical middleman of the controlling bishop. The bishops wanted to form an exclusive monopoly on religious Good.

They didn't directly care at all about literalism, but what was all-important was having a monopoly, and literalism was the means to their monopoly, not the end in itself. That's what literalism was financially for. Follow the money: how did the rulers of society financially profit from literalization of the Christian myth? The official religion became necessarily literalist because that was a strategy to monopolize and control salvation, creating a false scarcity of enlightenment and salvation and righteousness.

Jesus came only once, and all religious value comes strictly through him and then through controlled channels (the Peter figure) to him.

Note that while one book proclaims Christ and the apostles as the foundation stones of the Church, Matthew 16:18 seems to portray either Peter, or more likely Peter's proclamation of jesus as son of god, as the foundation stone of the Church.

There is nothing wrong with the pun of equating the mythic Peter figure with the foundation of the mystic-state Church, but the official bishops strove to profit from control of religious Good (salvation, sin-cleansing, enlightenment), and the way to do this was to literalize the mythic fine notion of Peter and his proclamation being the foundation petra of the Church. Ultimately, the issue isn't whether the word "this" points to Peter or to his proclamation, in identifying what Jesus said is the foundation of the Church.

What *really* matters is the mode of interpretation: mystic mythic metaphor that describes universally directly available religious Good, versus literalism -- particularly a literalism that is intent, above all, on crafting an artificial scarcity of religious Good (salvation, however it is conceived), controlled by the bishops. The bishops' real strategy is, "We don't care what you think salvation is and means, as long as you agree that it is only available through routing your money through our pockets exclusively."

What is acceptable theology? The theology which is acceptable to the bishops is anything and everything as long as it supports most effectively the one thing that is actually important: routing all the religious money through the pockets of the bishops; with only one sacrament, only one church, only one (flexible) theology, and far above all -- only one channel for money, the one that goes through the bishops' pockets.

Why *must* all religious value be concentrated entirely and only in the one true savior, the only door to heaven, Jesus? And why must Peter be real and be the only apostle to whom Jesus gave the keys to heaven and all religious Good, however it may be conceived?

Because a literal man in whom all religious Good is exclusively concentrated, and who handed the exclusive and restricted keys to only one man, Peter, the original head bishop, and always onto only one man at a time, the head bishop or Pope, is the most effective way to construct and fabricate an artificial monopoly of religious Good in order to route all money and power through the pockets and controlling hands of the bishops.

Why and to what extent do the bishops need to suppress the pure mythic view, the no-free-will doctrine, and sacred meals of visionary plants? The bishops don't directly give a damn about visionary plants, no-free-will philosophy, or pure mythic views -- but they *do* care *entirely* about creating artificial scarcity of religious Good in order to route money and power their way, and this indirectly requires suppressing high, effective religion.

Only by suppressing the no-free-will doctrine, visionary plants, and the pure mythic interpretation of religion, can direct access of each person to religious Good be prevented and a salvation franchise chain, controlled by bishops, be installed in order to profitably sell salvation to individuals at grossly inflated prices, similar to how the government and big business profit from the funny money generated by the results of making psychoactives illegal.

By suppressing real religion and constructing the narrowest acceptable substitute channel for religious quasi-fulfilment instead, the rulers of this world have profited wildly through their artificial salvation franchise, like the governor who supressed the discovery of the air-generating machine on Mars in the movie Total Recall, in order to profitably sell air to the populace.

Suppression of the universal mythic mystic-state Jesus was necessary in order to restrict availability of Jesus' religious Good to the few, official channels, controlled by the profit-mongering bishops. Another reason Christianity was popular pre-313 was the figure of the godman chastising the pseudo-religious profit-driven religious leaders, who were part of the profit-driven System of Empire.

Those profit-driven temple leaders who strove to retain a monopoly on religious Good and cleansing of sins formed a direct, literal model for later pseudo-religious profit-driven leaders; there is nothing coincidental about it, just an age-old battle between the rulers who want to franchise religious Good and the mystics and populace who want religious Good to be directly universally accessible.

on evolution, teachers stray from the lesson plan...,

NYTimes | Teaching creationism in public schools has consistently been ruled unconstitutional in federal courts, but according to a national survey of more than 900 public high school biology teachers, it continues to flourish in the nation’s classrooms.

Researchers found that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology. At the other extreme, 13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light.

That leaves what the authors call “the cautious 60 percent,” who avoid controversy by endorsing neither evolution nor its unscientific alternatives. In various ways, they compromise.

The survey, published in the Jan. 28 issue of Science, found that some avoid intellectual commitment by explaining that they teach evolution only because state examinations require it, and that students do not need to “believe” in it. Others treat evolution as if it applied only on a molecular level, avoiding any discussion of the evolution of species. And a large number claim that students are free to choose evolution or creationism based on their own beliefs.

Eric Plutzer, a co-author of the paper, said that the most enthusiastic proponents of creationism were geographically widely spread across the country.

More high school students take biology than any other science course, the researchers write, and for about a quarter of them it will be the only science course they take. So the influence of these teachers looms large.

palin's curious views on jews...,

Video - Overview of Christian Zionism aka Dispensationalism.

HuffPo | Palin's invoking of blood libel, which in its proper use refers to a centuries old lie that was used to justify mass anti-semitism and Jewish persecution, immediately drew angry responses from politicians and Jewish groups, but also brings back to the forefront her own religious affiliation -- and its not infrequent brushes with anti-semitism.

Palin, who makes no secret of her devout Christian evangelism, is a member of Wasilla Bible Church, which subscribes to the Pentecostal Assembly of God. It is a small community church, but one that has been the host to a number of controversial speakers -- with Palin both in the audience and openly participating.

But it starts earlier than that. Palin is a member of a spiritual network maintained by Mary Glazier, a member of the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders. A council of 500 "apostles," with each leader heading up its own network - like the one Palin is in - they seek to use "spiritual warfare" to retake the nation - and world - from the sinners they claim are currently running it.

In large part, they're referring to American Jews.

One Apostle, Thomas Hess, wrote about the American Jews in his book, 'Let My People Go: The Struggle of the American Jew to Come Home to Israel,' and hit out specifically about American Jews.

"...the Jewish people today are in slavery to many false gods in America.... My prayer is that American Jewish people become aware of the bondages to these gods and break free from them.. They must make Aliyah (return) to Israel before greater judgment or plagues come upon America. The Jewish people in America must be freed from this slavery to materialism in all of its forms in order to escape to Israel. Because of the way the Jewish people have prospered and been blessed in America, this struggle is even greater than it was to leave Europe more than seventy years ago."

Aside from seeking mass conversion, the Apostles preach about the inevitable end times, and the hazard Jews face if they do not change their ways - to follow the fringe Christian Zionist agenda, which involves handing over their "control" of the world to these Christian leaders. Part of that "moral" Jewish transformation involves moving to Israel.

While they seem to be cautioning the Jews (if in hateful and insulting ways), in actuality, they believe that their return to Israel will trigger a second coming of the Messiah -- though that may require Israel go to nuclear war with Iran in a struggle for power in the region. Collateral damage.

In fact, they are beyond adamant about the requirement for all Jews to move to Israel, invoking great tragedies as part of the plan to make it happen. John Hagee, who endorsed John McCain and Palin, is one of those Apostles, and in 2008 gave a speech titled 'Hitler is God's hunter.'

In the speech, Hagee said:

"Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says -- Jeremiah writing -- 'They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,' meaning there's no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel."

Hagee, who was a close ally of President George W. Bush and Tom DeLay, spoke at Glenn Beck's rally in August -- as did Palin -- isn't alone in this belief.

In more close proximity to Palin's statement yesterday, Hess linked Jews with abortion - a claim that has echoes of the blood libel charge.

He wrote:

There is so much blood on American soil, it is a miracle we have not already been destroyed as a nation! Many secular, reformed and conservative Jews have encouraged abortion despite the fact that the killing of their future generations will affect the future of the Jewish people. There is little difference today between child sacrifice in the Old Testament and abortions today.

So, what is Palin's connection with this group? Palin got her famous "lipstick on a pig" joke from Hagee, and Hess's book is marketed by and contributed to by Rick Joyner, who has his own history of Jewish conversion-themed writing. And he has literally had his hands on the head of Palin.

Palin has been "anointed," or given blessing, three times by three separate apostles of the movement. Joyner gave his blessing to the pastor of Palin's church, Ed Kalnins, who passed it on to Palin in a ceremony in 2008.

sapolsky on religion

Video - Part 1 of Dr. Robert Sapolsky's fascinating assessment of western irrationality.


Video - Part 2 of Dr. Robert Sapolsky's lecture on western irrationality.

Other important points made by Professor Sapolsky on the fact that religion is an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Obviously it must be installed in the human mind, since not only religion is an OCD, but an addiction for many other people. Notice how many people are on drugs, alcohol, and they come clean thanks to religion, why? Because they substituted one addiction, for another.
Interesting also the point he makes, the top four religious prescriptions are the same as the top 4 OCDs:

1.cleansing of the body
2.food preparation
3.entering and leaving religious places
4.numerology

It would be interesting also to study human beings with hippocampus damage, to see if they are more superstitious, and consequently more easily enslaved by the lies invented by religions. Lets hope Christians never read neurology books, otherwise it could be the start of the next inquisition!

should "christians" practice yoga?

Video - Polyglot heathen new-age cultural practices.

AlbertMohler | Reading The Subtle Body is an eye-opening and truly interesting experience. To a remarkable degree, the growing acceptance of yoga points to the retreat of biblical Christianity in the culture. Yoga begins and ends with an understanding of the body that is, to say the very least, at odds with the Christian understanding. Christians are not called to empty the mind or to see the human body as a means of connecting to and coming to know the divine. Believers are called to meditate upon the Word of God — an external Word that comes to us by divine revelation — not to meditate by means of incomprehensible syllables.

Nevertheless, a significant number of American Christians either experiment with yoga or become adherents of some yoga discipline. Most seem unaware that yoga cannot be neatly separated into physical and spiritual dimensions. The physical is the spiritual in yoga, and the exercises and disciplines of yoga are meant to connect with the divine.

Douglas R. Groothuis, Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary and a respected specialist on the New Age Movement, warns Christians that yoga is not merely about physical exercise or health. “All forms of yoga involve occult assumptions,” he warns, “even hatha yoga, which is often presented as a merely physical discipline.” While most adherents of yoga avoid the more exotic forms of ritualized sex that are associated with tantric yoga, virtually all forms of yoga involve an emphasis on channeling sexual energy throughout the body as a means of spiritual enlightenment.

Stefanie Syman documents how yoga was transformed in American culture from an exotic and heathen practice into a central component of our national cult of health. Of course, her story would end differently if Americans still had cultural access to the notion of “heathen.”

The nation of India is almost manically syncretistic, blending worldviews over and over again. But, in more recent times, America has developed its own obsession with syncretism, mixing elements of worldviews with little or no attention to what each mix means. Americans have turned yoga into an exercise ritual, a means of focusing attention, and an avenue to longer life and greater health. Many Americans attempt to deny or minimize the spiritual aspects of yoga — to the great consternation of many in India.

When Christians practice yoga, they must either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace of yoga. The contradictions are not few, nor are they peripheral. The bare fact is that yoga is a spiritual discipline by which the adherent is trained to use the body as a vehicle for achieving consciousness of the divine. Christians are called to look to Christ for all that we need and to obey Christ through obeying his Word. We are not called to escape the consciousness of this world by achieving an elevated state of consciousness, but to follow Christ in the way of faithfulness.

There is nothing wrong with physical exercise, and yoga positions in themselves are not the main issue. But these positions are teaching postures with a spiritual purpose. Consider this — if you have to meditate intensely in order to achieve or to maintain a physical posture, it is no longer merely a physical posture.

The embrace of yoga is a symptom of our postmodern spiritual confusion, and, to our shame, this confusion reaches into the church. Stefanie Syman is telling us something important when she writes that yoga “has augured a truly post-Christian, spiritually polyglot country.” Christians who practice yoga are embracing, or at minimum flirting with, a spiritual practice that threatens to transform their own spiritual lives into a “post-Christian, spiritually polyglot” reality. Should any Christian willingly risk that?

what "pastor" in his right mind?

Video - InternetGuide4Muslims summarizes the "bishop".

WaPo | Bishop Eddie L. Long built a religious empire just outside Atlanta by preaching a blend of the Gospel mixing faith, politics and finance - wrapped up in a flashy style - that propelled him to the pinnacle of the movement of large, independent African American mega-churches across the nation.

Now, after he was slapped with four lawsuits last week alleging he used his position to coerce young male members of his flock into sex acts, Long's future as a towering figure in the one of the country's most accomplished black communities and beyond is in question. On Sunday, Long is expected to take to the pulpit of his sprawling Lithonia church and address his 25,000-member congregation.

Many thousands more will be listening, and some are even flying to witness the event. The allegations have been a hot topic on black radio and Web sites since they came to light Tuesday, and black preachers across the country will continue the conversation from their pulpits Sunday.

It is, parishioners and observers say, a moment of undeniable crisis in the black church.

"The only person in the pantheon of black churches who is bigger than this is T.D. Jakes," said Anthea Butler, a religion professor at the University of Pennsylvania who was among those flying down to Georgia. "And Atlanta is the epicenter of black church life. . . . It's going to rock everything at the church, and people will really start to question these ministers."

Video - "Bishop" used the bible to justify "releasing his passion".

god vs. logic

Video - God vs. Logic.

Vanity Fair | What’s an atheist to think when thousands of believers (including prominent rabbis and priests) are praying for his survival and salvation—while others believe his cancer was divinely inspired, and hope that he burns in hell?

Who else feels Christopher Hitchens getting terminal throat cancer [sic] was God’s revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him? Atheists like to ignore FACTS. They like to act like everything is a “coincidence”. Really? It’s just a “coincidence” [that] out of any part of his body, Christopher Hitchens got cancer in the one part of his body he used for blasphemy? Yea, keep believing that Atheists. He’s going to writhe in agony and pain and wither away to nothing and then die a horrible agonizing death, and THEN comes the real fun, when he’s sent to HELLFIRE forever to be tortured and set afire.

There are numerous passages in holy scripture and religious tradition that for centuries made this kind of gloating into a mainstream belief. Long before it concerned me particularly I had understood the obvious objections. First, which mere primate is so damn sure that he can know the mind of god? Second, would this anonymous author want his views to be read by my unoffending children, who are also being given a hard time in their way, and by the same god? Third, why not a thunderbolt for yours truly, or something similarly awe-inspiring? The vengeful deity has a sadly depleted arsenal if all he can think of is exactly the cancer that my age and former “lifestyle” would suggest that I got. Fourth, why cancer at all? Almost all men get cancer of the prostate if they live long enough: it’s an undignified thing but quite evenly distributed among saints and sinners, believers and unbelievers. If you maintain that god awards the appropriate cancers, you must also account for the numbers of infants who contract leukemia. Devout persons have died young and in pain. Bertrand Russell and Voltaire, by contrast, remained spry until the end, as many psychopathic criminals and tyrants have also done. These visitations, then, seem awfully random. While my so far uncancerous throat, let me rush to assure my Christian correspondent above, is not at all the only organ with which I have blasphemed …And even if my voice goes before I do, I shall continue to write polemics against religious delusions, at least until it’s hello darkness my old friend. In which case, why not cancer of the brain? As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be “me.” (Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumors or fabrications.)

thumper die-off narrative....,

Video - rapture, tribulation, left behind.....,

preachers ALWAYS trying to set folk back....,

NYTimes | How black voters in California decide on Proposition 19, which would allow anyone 21 and over to possess up to an ounce of marijuana, could be critical to its success or failure. (At the moment, possession of more than 28.5 grams of marijuana, about an ounce, is punishable in most cases by up to six months in prison and a $500 fine.)

Blacks make up less than 10 percent of the population in California, but unlike two larger minority groups in the state where opinions on the measure are also split — Asians and Latinos — their “participation in elections is on par with their populations,” according to the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit group here.

In the case of Proposition 19 — which is trailing narrowly in a recent Field Poll — appeals to that potential swing bloc have already begun, and the measure’s backers have been seeking out the support of prominent black leaders. Last week, proponents secured what they view as a major endorsement, that of Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the former United States surgeon general and the first black to hold that position.

In a statement to be published in a voter guide, Dr. Elders said the legalization bill would help divert law enforcement resources to more serious threats. “We can let police prevent violent crime, or we can accept the status quo, and keep wasting resources sending tens of thousands of nonviolent marijuana consumers — a disproportionate number who are minorities — to jail,” Dr. Elders wrote.

Kamala D. Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, who is black, joined the opposition last week. Ms. Harris, who is running for state attorney general, issued a statement saying that the proposition would encourage “driving while high” and drugs in the workplace.

Enforcement of marijuana possession laws is a touchy topic among many blacks here and nationwide.

This month, the Drug Policy Alliance — a New York group that is supporting Proposition 19 — released a study showing that blacks were arrested for possession at far higher rates than whites in California’s 25 largest counties, often two or three times higher. In those 25 counties, blacks make up 7 percent of the population but accounted for 20 percent of the marijuana possession arrests; in Los Angeles County, which accounts for about a quarter of the state’s population, blacks were arrested for marijuana possession at three times the rate of whites.

At the moment, 1,515 people are in California prisons on marijuana charges, 750 of them black, state corrections officials say.

The study’s author, Harry G. Levine, a professor of sociology at Queens College who has discovered similar trends in marijuana arrests in New York City, said that the impact of those arrests could be profound.

“A criminal record lasts a lifetime,” Mr. Levine wrote. “The explosive growth of criminal record databases, and the ease with which those databases can be accessed on the Internet, creates barriers to employment, housing and education for anyone simply arrested for drug possession.”

Rob MacCoun, a professor of law and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied marijuana use in America, said there was little doubt that blacks — particularly black men — bore the brunt of arrests for marijuana.

“The arrest statistics are disproportionate with respect to African-Americans and disproportionate with respect to use,” said Mr. MacCoun. “And that’s very hard to justify in any way.”