BackTalking is what always got me in trouble throughout life, so it would seem to be a good theme for a first blog. It's also part of the title of my public access show.
Everyone thinks they know me. We'll see....
Ethical: NOT!
Go to HELL! (No, really, go here!) At least, if you have a sense of humor...
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One for the IDiots...
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Actually, Just Penn:
I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond Atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?
So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The Atheism part is easy.
But, this "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."
Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.
Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.
Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5015557
http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2005/10/only-debate-on-intelligent-design-that.html
From a Newsweek article: FEMA has issued "an instruction that chaplains bless recovered bodies. A company source said the Feds are insisting on this, and the first chaplains are supposed to go out this week. Asked if that was mixing church and state, a FEMA spokeswoman responded: 'A prayer is not necessarily religious. Everybody prays.'"
WRONG! This is why I've lost what little respect I had for government agencies - too many staffers have this mindset, encouraged by W's lack of intelligence! Hey, if the boss doesn't have to think, why should I?
Many people are criticizing Pat Robertson for his suggestion that we assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
I disagree. I think it's the most sensible thing Pat's said in his life. I think, instead of wars that kill thousands of innocents and risk the lives of soldiers, all political disputes should be settled by assassination - between the leaders. In other words, Bush himself should be responsible for taking on/out Saddam, Osama, Chavez, and anyone else he's rattled sabers at. After all, he spends far more time keeping himself in shape than developing
his brain - let's put those muscles to use!
Cowards send others to do their dirty work. Gladiators do it themselves. Let the games begin!
The Most Famous Christian of the 20th Century?
Hint: He was born in Austria, tried to take over the world, and no, he’s not the Governor of California.
By Robert Flynn
SoMA - August 8, 2005
Here’s a little trivia question for you. Who was the most famous Christian of the 20th century?
Mother Teresa? Nope. Billy Graham? Nope. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Guess again. Albert Schweitzer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, any and all popes, any and all U.S. presidents…Nah, throw ‘em out.
The most famous Christian of the 20th century was Adolf Hitler.
Sure, we call Hitler infamous today. But before he started gobbling up European countries like they were little bratwurst sausages, Hitler was famous as a world leader with high moral values and a distinctly Christian vision.
In fact, no present politician has more blatantly declared his Christianity than Hitler, or has had his faith so widely accepted. Millions of Christians around the world admired the savvy tyrant; a couple of his more recognizable fans included Britain’s Lloyd George and that all-American idol of idols, Charles Lindbergh. The most appealing of Hitler’s “Christian” attributes included:
•His morality. He did not smoke or drink and he abhorred pornography and homosexuality.
•His call for his nation to repent. “Providence withdrew its protection and our people fell… And in this hour we sink to our knees and beseech our almighty God that He may bless us, that He may give us the strength to carry on the struggle for the freedom, the future, the honor, and the peace of our people. So help us God.” (March 1936)
*His stand against secularism: “Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without religious foundation is built on air; consequently all character training and religion must be derived from faith….” (April 1933)
*His war on atheism: “We were convinced that the people need and require [the Christian] faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” (October 1933)
*His blending of church and state: “National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity… For their interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of today, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life…These are Christian principles!” (August 1934)
•His faith-based charity: “With a tenth of our budget for religion, we would thus have a Church devoted to the State and of unshakable loyalty.” (January 1939)
•His God-given mission to cleanse Germany of evil as personified by the Jews, liberals, homosexuals, labor leaders, homeless people, immigrants from inferior cultures, and the weak and sick. “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” And, “We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit… We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press—in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess…” (March 1936)
•His patriotism and the belief that his nation’s weakness was because “...the watchword of German foreign policy ceased to be: preservation of the German nation by all methods; but rather: preservation of world peace by all means.”
•His condemnation of others who sought to use religion for personal gain. “Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends. In truth, we cannot sharply enough attack those wretched crooks who would like to make religion an implement to perform political or rather business services
for them. These insolent liars, it is true, proclaim their creed in a stentorian voice to the whole world for other sinners to hear; but their intention is not, if necessary, to die for it, but to live better.”
•His vow to end terrorism: “…we must not dodge this struggle, but prepare for it, and for this reason acquire armament which alone offers protection against violence. Terror is not broken by the mind, but by terror.”
•His devotion to the Ten Commandments, which he proclaimed the foundation of Nazi Germany: “The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there’s no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefutable needs of the human soul.”
•His warriorship for the Lord. “I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany.” “I follow the path assigned to me by Providence ... there is a God… And this God again has blessed our efforts during the past 13 years.” (February 1940)
Though Hitler talked a lot about being a Christian, the million-dollar question is: did he actually consider himself one? The answer isn’t simple. True, he was born and died a Roman Catholic; in fact, he was confirmed as a “soldier of Christ” in the church and served as an altar boy. And in 1941, the year he rolled into Russia, Hitler told General Gerhart Engel: “I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.” The Vatican, for its part, considered Hitler Christian enough; they certainly didn’t excommunicate him.
On the other hand, Hitler privately loathed Christianity, calling it “a drug” and “senseless,” the “invention of sick brains.” He also perceived it as a potential threat to his leadership, and intended to abolish the church. And let’s not forget: He did make Nazism the official state religion and he replaced school and church Bibles with copies of “Mein Kampf.”
Over the years Christians have argued that Hitler was an atheist, a hard claim to defend. Never mind that he repeatedly attacked atheism, he never said anything to indicate he was an atheist. From what those who knew him later in life said, Hitler was a theist, viewing God as a somewhat distant figure, though not wholly removed from human affairs; after all, the S.S., Hitler’s elite soldiers and personal bodyguards, wore belt buckles that read, “Gott Mit Uns”—or “God Is With Us.”
And then there’s Hitler’s personal library. A 2003 Atlantic Monthly article notes that more than 130 books, included in a small portion of Hitler’s collection stored at the Library of Congress, deal with spiritual topics, from Occidental occultism and Eastern mysticism to the teachings of Jesus, revealing a deep interest in religion and theology.
Hitler was particularly taken with devotional books and works on Jesus. Titles included “On Prayer,” “Sunday Meditations,” “A Primer for Religious Questions Large and Small,” and “Large Truths About Mankind, the World, and God.” He also owned a translation of E. Stanley Jones’ 1931 bestseller, “The Christ of the Mount,” and a 500-page book on the life and teachings of Jesus called “The Son: The Evangelical Sources and Pronouncements of Jesus of Nazareth in Their Original Form and With the Jewish Influences.”
These were books Hitler collected from the 1920s until his final years, and they weren’t just for show. Many of them were well-read and contain margin notes in Hitler’s writing. Ironically, in a book entitled “The Words of Christ,” there’s a pencil line alongside this passage: “"You should love God, your Lord, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your spirit: this is the foremost and greatest commandment. Another is equally important: Love your neighbor as you would love yourself."
A book on the trinity by Maximilian Reidel also captured Hitler’s imagination. He read it carefully and made extensive marginalia in it. He heavily underlined one passage that he later worked into a talk he gave to guests in December of 1941, when he said, "If there is a God, then he gives us not only life but also consciousness and awareness. If I live my life according to my God-given insights, then I cannot go wrong, and even if I do, I know I have acted in good faith."
If Hitler were an American politician today, based solely on his faith and God-talk, he’d make an attractive candidate to the Christian right.
That Hitler exploited religion for political gain, however, is a given. He knew that he lived in a nation that was overwhelmingly Christian, and he used Christianity to pander to mass idiocy in order to draw the biggest crowd in history. Hitler’s image as a Christian on a mission from God spread the world over and reached America early. On February 23, 1933, the Associated Press ran a wire story under the headline, “Hitler Aims Blow at ‘Godless Move.” The article described Hitler reaching out to Catholics for support in his attack against the “spread of atheism,” citing a papal encyclical admonishing priests to “serve the religious interests of the nation.”
“Hitler, himself, is a Catholic,” the article noted.
Hitler definitely brought out the worst in Christians. Those who admired the Fuhrer were either mindless sheep or, like him, wolves in sheep’s clothing, hiding their decidedly un-Christian personas behind the hypocritical mask of organized religion. Lest anyone doubt that it could have happened here in the United States, the following excerpt, from an article written by Lloyd Allen, professor of church history and spiritual formation at the McAfee School of Theology is a chilling reminder that the basic tenets of Nazism were not the sole property of the Germans.
“I came to this conclusion (the Baptists’ reluctance to speak out on larger issues of the world’s economic, social and political scene) while writing an article on the Baptist World Alliance congress in Berlin in 1934. An immense Nazi flag, hung where the congress met, was a vivid reminder of the bloody purge executed only a few weeks before by anti-Semitic fascists.
“Most of the BWA delegates spoke out for soul liberty, the kinship of all humanity and the separation of church and state, but too many Baptist leaders did not. Indeed, a number of U.S. Baptists wrote sympathetically of Hitler’s Germany.
“John Sampey, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary cautioned against hasty judgment of a leader (Hitler) who had stopped German women from smoking cigarettes and wearing red lipstick in public.
“The Watchman-Examiner [a national Baptist newspaper] carried a letter by Boston pastor John Bradbury. Of the congress he wrote, ‘It was a great relief to be in a country where salacious sex literature cannot be sold; where putrid motion pictures and gangster films cannot be shown.’
“Southern Baptist Convention President M.E. Dodd of Louisiana defended Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, who he declared were guilty of ‘self-aggrandizement to the injury of the German people.’ Besides, Dodd continued, most of the 200,000 Jewish refugees who went to Germany from Eastern Europe ‘were communist agitators against the government.’”
And you didn’t have to go all the way to Berlin to find Nazi Christian Americans congregating. German Bunds in America offered adult training, youth camps and propaganda distribution activities, taking orders directly from the Fatherland. There were the Hitler-inspired Silver Shirts, organized by William Dudley Pelley in North Carolina in the 1930s, and the Defenders of the Christian Faith, an organization founded by Reverend Gerald B. Winrod, a virulent anti-Semite who in the best KKK tradition organized the Knights of the White Camellia. It was standing room only on The American Christian Nazi bandwagon, whose overflow of passengers included the Black Legion; the Sentinels of the Republic; the American Vigilante Intelligence Federation; Father Charles E. Coughlin’s infamous Christian Front; and the America First Committee, dedicated to the Democratic principles of isolationism, pacifism and anti-Semitism, and boasting “Lindy” Lindbergh as its poster boy. (After the war, it was revealed that “America’s Firsters” had accepted financial support from Germany.)
Fortunately there were enough true Christians around to keep the essence of Christ’s message alive. Many died resisting the evils of Hitler’s regime, and millions more sacrificed their lives to defeat his armies. Nevertheless, the once vibrant churches of Europe are now largely deserted, at least in part because of Hitler’s excesses in the name of Jesus. And it’s not just ancient history: as we speak, the Christian Right is busy demolishing our civil and religious liberties in the name of America and Christ. A word to the wise, and to those who should be wiser: it can happen here.
All of Hitler’s quotes are either from his speeches, which are dated by month and year, or “Mein Kampf.”
If you’d like to comment on this article, click here.
Robert Flynn is the author of 13 books including "Growing Up a Sullen Baptist" and "Slouching Toward Zion."
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There seems to be a spate of articles lately by liberal to moderate religionists denouncing fundamentalism and defending science as applied to evoltion vs. creationism, stem cell research, etc. While I'm always tempted to be overjoyed by anyone, especially someone like the president of Eckerd College, a Presbyterian-tied school, promoting reason, I'm torn by the conflicting emotions such articles produce.
Nearly every one ends up by saying, in essence, that while reason should be given priority, faith deserves to be kept in the mix.
This is the equivalent of saying that a barrel of fine wine needs to be urinated in to give it extra flavor.
Faith can be described in logical terms: faith is jumping to a conclusion with insufficient evidence to warrant any conclusion, and in some cases enough contradictory evidence to warrant the opposite conclusion. There's a reason it's called a "leap of faith."
Faith kills. Faith is what convinces people it's okay to fly airplanes into buildings, to start wars because you believe that we'll find WMDs, that murdering doctors who provide services you disapprove of or human beings whose sexual orientation you dislike is a ticket to eternal bliss.
Faith is a deadly disease for which there is no cure. We cannot prevent deaths by telling people to have a little bit of faith, for once faith infects a mind, it's difficult to eradicate, and one never knows which cases will be fatal - for the infected or for those around him or her (mostly hims, but women are starting to take their place in the ranks of fanatics at a growing rate.)
Recently, I was diagnosed with A.A.A.D.D.
Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.
This is how it manifests:
I decide to water my garden. As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide my car needs washing.
As I start toward the garage, I notice that there is mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mailbox earlier.
I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full.
So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.
But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first. I take my checkbook off the table and see that there is only one check left.
My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Coke that I had been drinking.
I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the Coke aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over. I see that the Coke is getting warm, and I decide I should put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.
As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye -- they need to be watered. I set the Coke down on the counter, and I discover my reading glasses that I've been searching for all morning.
I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I'm going to water the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water, and suddenly I spot the TV remote -- someone left it on the kitchen table.
I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I will be looking for the remote, but I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers.
I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor. So, I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.
Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.
At the end of the day:
The garden isn't watered, the car isn't washed, the garbage isn't taken out, the bills aren't paid, there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter, the flowers don't have enough water, there is still only one check in my checkbook, I can't find the remote, I can't find my glasses, and I don't remember what I did with the car keys.
Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all day long, and I'm really tired.
I realize this is a serious problem, and I'll try to get some help for it, but first I'll check my e-mail.
Don't laugh -- if this isn't you yet, your day is coming.
Here's why you can't buy the News Journal at Wal-Mart
You can't buy the Pensacola News Journal at Wal-Mart anymore.
The store ordered us off their property, told us to come pick up our newspaper racks and clear out.
So we did.
A few people called last week, some even wrote letters to the editor, and wanted to know why they couldn't buy the newspaper at Wal-Mart in the days after Hurricane Dennis.
Some managers at Wal-Mart didn't appreciate a column Mark O'Brien wrote last month about the downside of the cheap prices that Sam Walton's empire has brought to America. We all pay a little less, and sometimes a lot less, at the grocery store and department store because of Mr. Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart.
Mr. Walton developed a brilliant business model that allowed him to undercut the prices of his competitors. He made sure that the blue jeans his store sold were cheaper than the jeans the store down the road sold. And if some store had a two-for-one special on boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Wal-Mart would have a three-for-one special.
Leave it to old Mark, whose column runs four days a week in this newspaper, to find a downside to this. Actually, it wasn't Mark, but Thomas Friedman, who wrote "The World is Flat," which happens to be a best seller right now.
I don't mean to rub salt in a wound, but here's what Mark wrote:
"I like Wal-Mart prices the same as the next shopper, but there's a downside, too. Many Wal-Mart employees lack the fringe benefits and insurance that makes the difference between existence and a good quality of life. Yet, we customers pay a surcharge from a different pocket — subsidizing health care for Wal-Mart employees who can't afford it."
Mark then described how Friedman's book pointed out that more than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees are in a Georgia health-care program, which costs the state's taxpayers nearly $10 million a year. Mark also pointed out that a New York Times report found that 31 percent of the patients at a North Carolina hospital were Wal-Mart employees on Medicaid.
Mark's column really wasn't about Mr. Walton's store, but about Pensacola and how we're becoming a Wal-Mart kind of town, "cheap and comfy on the surface, lots of unhappiness and hidden costs underneath."
That was the point Mark was trying to make.
Bob Hart, one of the upper managers for the Wal-Marts in the area, called me and said he didn't like Mark's column, didn't like a lot of Mark's columns.
I told Mr. Hart that I don't particularly like some of Mark's columns either. Like the one he wrote about charter government, which Escambia County had put on the ballot for voters to consider last year. Mark said the charter-government proposal was a mess and that people would be fools to vote for it.
I plain didn't like that column, especially since the week before I had written something that said charter government was the best idea since sliced bread. I am Mark's boss, you know. He ought to have given me a little more respect than that.
But Mark speaks his mind. And the truth be told, that's what he gets paid to do, even though it kind of hurt me when nearly 70 percent of the voters sided with Mark and rejected charter government.
Mr. Hart, however, said he and his stores couldn't tolerate a newspaper that would print the opinions of someone who was as mean and negative as Mark O'Brien. But, you know, Mark's not nearly as ornery as that left-wing rabble-rouser Molly Ivins, whose column the newspaper also publishes. At any rate, Mr. Hart said he wanted the newspaper to get its racks off his lots. But he also said that if I fired Mark, we could talk about continuing to sell the newspaper at his stores.
Wal-Mart is a company that wraps itself in red, white and blue.
I might understand it if Wal-Mart said I ought to fire Mark because what he said wasn't accurate. But that isn't the case. Mark accurately reported that there are 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees in a health-care program that is costing Georgia taxpayers nearly $10 million a year.
Shouldn't we talk about that?
When we stop listening to people on the other side of the fence, when we try to silence and even punish people for thinking differently than we do and raising facts and figures we don't like, well, we won't be red, white and blue anymore.
That's why Mark still has a job and you can't buy a Pensacola News Journal at Wal-Mart anymore.
Randy Hammer is executive editor of the News Journal. E-mail him at RandyHammer@PensacolaNewsJournal.com.
UPDATE: Since the publication and wide posting of this story, Wal-Mart has backed down, blaming a local manager for a poor decision. Coincidentally, that manager is on vacation - and to my knowledge, none of the practices reported that got Wal-Mart so incensed have changed, or will.
Don't know who to give original credit (or blame) for these, but I got them from a highschool classmate who goes by Mountain Poet:
BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline
was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps
on everything, and then leaves.
ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success
and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than by working hard.
SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming
upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.
CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.
PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a
cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going
on.
CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously farting while passing through a cube
farm, then enjoying the sounds of dismay and disgust(leads to PRAIRIE
DOGGING).
MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch
potato.
SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. (What
yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to
stay home with the kids.)
STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and
whiny.
SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless
because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying
but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The Anna Nicole show
or the Bachelor is a prime example.
PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an
electronic device to get it to work again.
ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just
above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are
often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were
designed to solve.
404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error
message"404 Not Found" (meaning that the requested document, like the
person's brain, could not be located.)
GENERICA: Features of the North American landscape that are exactly
the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls,
subdivisions.
OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize
that you've just made a BIG mistake. (I HAVE HAD A FEW OF THESE! :)
Sometimes known as an ignisecond.
WOOFYS: Well Off Older Folks.
http://www.dribbleglass.com/subpages/billboards33a.htm
Or is that daft?
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