Atheisum -A Sound Beginning

I guess a lot of us after Christmas presents have been open go through and reorganize our stuff and see what old things can be moved or discarded. One wonders whether this wouldn't be a good idea with one's religion. It's known that computers process better once they've had their registries cleaned and unnecessary start-up files eliminated, and undergone a de-fragging. It would seem to me in the name of sound mental health one should look at the world with an idea to exploring and examining it, that is, the things that are actually here, and not ideas in one's imagination. If this is true aren't we starting off not too differently from the Hebrews in Egypt, who "didn't even know God's name"? They didn't have all that theology cluttering up their brains or 2nd. and 3rd. hand ideas from old sermons that won't go away. If then there is a God, he or she would have to introduce himself afresh. Something like, "Hi, my name is God, glad to meet you. I'm a monotheist- and I'm really into self worship". People balk at this because it would mean asking a lot of "questions that have already been answered", so they think. The thing is the reason why people who are objects of worship fear questioning like the devil, is because they are afraid that some other competing deity will come up with a better answer than they can, and the layman will run to worship him. Such a God assumes that since he is so self obsessed, every other god must be equally self obsessed. Perhaps such a God will even say to you, "Don't go after that other god- - he opperates out of corrupt motives", when in truth this just a case of his projecting his own guilt. Of course were you to start with God afresh, every experiance you had with him would be a new and learning experiance. If you know pastors you know their deepest, darkest fear is that a congragate might actually learn something. Because if a pastor's congragation actually learns something there is a chance they might one day be smarter than their pastor. Also they would have to apply the same standards to their own religious experiances that they demand of others, that they "look with a critical eye" upon ANY experiance. Since so much of religion is built on the idea of post hypnotic suggestion, pastors would instantly lose an awful lot of their power. And the lay person just might discover like John Lennon did, that he doesn't need God at all to be happy and that would be just awful!

Some may say "what about man's evil impulses that need to be restrained"? We all know about the tiger in the zoo that has twice gotten away and attacked people. We know that tigers look dosile when they know they are caged but if oppertunity ever strikes they will revert to their old natures. I guess my question is if our whole religious "experiance with God" should be one of being "restrained" by him. Why cope endlessly with a god who sees your entire existance as some big mistake? You know people point to the book of Judges as an era where may sank to his lowest depeths. And yet Samuel in his warnings about not being able to trust King Saul said the entire idea of a king was inherently evil and you people don't know how good the old days really were untill they're gone. John Locke is a person who taught tha man was inherently good. Thom Hartman holds it as a matter of religious "faith" that Intelligent design is a lie. I'm not ready to take THAT leap of faith yet, though I'm getting closer with each passing day. Some may say that capitalism is bad but I say that Adam Smith was not far wrong and that if capitalism were left to its purist free market nature things would "work out" amazingly well, without corporate rules. The Federation has pointed out (and Thom Hartman has also stated this- ) that a lot of big corporations didn't get their power from out of the Blue. They got it from some sort of corporate Fasciest state. Many people don't know how "corporate" fascism is. It would seem Musselini actually had corporate heads rather than elected citizens, as members of his parliament. The Federation has pointed out that perhaps patents would not be honored. If you came up with a good idea somebody might steal it. The rejoinder to this is "Better to steal a Good idea than a Bad idea, and religion is a Bad idea. It would not be the worst thing in the world to let "market forces" that conservatives value so highly, to set the prices of competing goods and determine whether a certain idea was really "all that good" or not. Or course the Federation only applies this "free market" idea of patents to outside competing cultures. They have their own "State Secrets". But their reasoning is, that since it takes enlightened intelligence to come up with any working idea, particularly a vast improvement, it's never a bad idea to have "competetion for enlightenment". St. Paul said the same thing about preaching the Christian gospel in the Bible. He said that others would compete with you, perhaps even out of spiteful motive, in on-upping you on preaching the Gospell. But this whole idea of "motives" in doing something only becomes a major issue when the THING DONE itself is of questionable merit. Nobody attacks another person for out-giving them to a charity. (Selah)

Some may question what would happen with agression and bullies. Just yesterday a black man in a wheel chair got angry at this new guy for mistreating a long time female resident. Loyalty is the karmic fruit of good deeds. The truth even the Bible agrees with at times, is that there are more good people than evil people- - and when evil is brought to light- - the good people will rally around to eliminate it. This is why the notion of "Do not resist one who is Evil" spoken by Jesus, has never sat well with me. Even Jesus had an errant teaching now and then. Many evil people are artificially empowered- - -perhaps by a corporate fasciest state. There are various evil people in my life who have been "empowered" by certain other influential people in my life. The asshole from El Paso is a person who would have been far less dangerous to me, had it not been for certain people (one of whom is dead now) who empowered him. If we let the "free market" take care of morality and retrobution, it's just conceivable things may not turn out as bad as you think. You may point to stories like "Lord of the flies" or the Stanford Prison experiment where people sometimes give vent to their evil. Liberals are always talking about "psychoanalyzing terrorists". Do you mind if a psychoanalyze a tiger? At times a part of me feels gratified any time a member of the human community "gets it" from an animal. We don't know what "shit" that tiger has had to endure from his master over the years. Don't you think that tiger is entitled to have "issues"? If human and animal had equal access to our court system to sue each other for unjustified injuries, who do you think would be awarded favorible judgement in most cases? Look at the sharks and those Chinese who cut off their fins and leave them to drown. When there are perhaps nine or ten deaths world wide a year from sharks.

Some like on that Bones show last night say you can psycho-analyze a person from their writings and by their handwriting, kind of like tea leaves. I'm never found this a satisfactory method of determining who wrote which NT book in the Bible and I don't think it's good evidence- - if you have better evidence like getting to meet the actual person and know them and see how they govern their lives and how they face challenging situations. Some may see the story of Zachery in my writings and assume I have a messiah fixation. But if one views the totality of all my writings and go back even to teenage and childhood years if you can, you will know that in September 1976 this whole baby-messiah thing was a highly alien one, and even after this date all the other imaginary people in my existance went on with their lives with no need of any Messiah. People - - shrinkos- - seem to disregard that people actually pick up alien things from their environment and incorporate them from time to time- - and not every syllable ever written comes from deep in the subconscious. The Federation has spoken of these people, "We do awful things to people who try to psycho-analyze us". If you psychoanalized all the New Testiment people in the Bible you could come up with all sorts of things if you wanted to.

I guess what I am in favor is a state of rigidly enforced- - - Fairness. You know the saying: Life isn't fair. This means of course that God isn't fair because everything that happens is predestined. If you go to talk to God about things you see as problems he'll go "What problem? I don't see any problem". God's idea of handeling problems is to ignore them. After if he had wanted the problem not to exist he wouldn't have created it in the first place. And since there is "no problem" - - God ipso facto- - never has any complaint about people being out of his Will, because they never are. Gene Scott has stated "Once you're in God's will it's harder to get out of God's will than it is to stay in it". There is a perverse truth here. There are probably people who if it were put to a vote would go for a super-hero like Superman, rather than "Jesus Christ Superstar". I know this- - I have seen Christianity more from the inside than most people of the world have. You've heard that expression "If they could see the side of you I see every day they'd never say the things about you they do". John Lennon said Christianity would "vanish and shrink". I just don't see how it's possible for Christianity to last the century and I really believe we'll be seeing the end of it within fifty years. After the war in the 2030's which the Federation walls "World War IV" for some odd reason, people will see the abject horror and ecological disaster of war- - and it will probably be caused by ecological problems to begin with. Federation teaching says that in the early 2040's a "new kind of" spiritual revival will take place here on earth. Circumstances have tested my Faith- - and pretty much destroyed it. When everybody else has the same experiance I have had, the chickens will truely be coming home to roost on Christianity. Christianity has yet to really be "tested" by the Modern World so far. But we know that major World Wars throughout the history have fundamentally "changed" both sides in the conflict. People who "learn" things come to embrace the new and disregard that which doesn't work. Dr. Dean Edell says "People will cling to an old product- - even one that doesn't work". But they don't go on forever. Behold, a time After Forever is approaching.

Randi Rhodes has stated that this Democratic Congress passed some "thought police" anti-terrorism bill that controls so many aspects of the behavior of a free citizen such as organizing and protesting the government. Even bastions of the right wing are not safe such as religious beliefs and gun clubs and "Anti Globalists", or people who resist the New World Order, Bush Sr. was so fond of talking about. Randi says "When they come after you right wingers- - I'll be the only friend you can turn to because I'll defend your right to be different". Apparently it was a near unanamus vote of congress. Of course there is the whole bit about people not getting proper medical care in this country like that seventeen year old girl who needed a liver and was denied one. I suppose the corporations will somehow be exempt from all these new fasciestic rules that have just been instituted by congress. Just how does that work. Does Dick Chaney hand them a "get out of jail" card or something? It's kind of like Calvary Chapel Christianity. You may not be sure who all the insiders are but THEY know who they are. Just how they achieved the status as insiders, perhaps Randi Rhodes can tell us.