Oh, snap!
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Tweet Of The Day II
Margie Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church has received a lot of publicity in the last 24 hours. She posted a tweet from her iPhone yesterday, announcing that the church would be picketing the funeral of Steve Jobs, because he "taught sin".
She sent a follow up tweet to explain herself this morning.
According to Phelps, god created the iPhone, ergo, Steve Jobs is god. Nerds have been preaching this for the better part of 30 years.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Draw A Circle Around The Most Offensive Thing On This Page
Thank God this wasn't a question on my SATs. Totally would have blown my chances for a scholarship at The Drive-By Christian Broadcasting Network School of Law for Fundamentalist Government Infiltration. I thought all dogs go to heaven. Evidently, I'm wrong.
Courtesy Jesus Needs New PR.
Courtesy Jesus Needs New PR.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Soundtrack of My Life 12/13/09 - XTC 'Dear God'
Sometimes when you've had something force fed to you for so long, you become so repulsed by it that you'll never try it again. It sort of reminds me of the stories you hear of people that get caught smoking as a kid. Their father makes them smoke the rest of the pack until they puke. They never smoke again. Even in adulthood, the thought of smoking physically makes them ill. I have the same reaction to religion.
I was raised in a very strict, religious family. I was giving public sermons in front of my local congregation at the age of four. I was knocking on doors, preaching the "good news of God's kingdom" on Saturday mornings soon thereafter. I knew the Bible, inside and out, and could quote hundreds of verses by the time I entered grade school. I was brainwashed.
It only got worse as I grew older. My sermons became more complex and more in depth. I was offering prayer before the congregation, which was a pretty big deal.
As I grew older, and wiser, I started to realize that everything I was taught and everything I was teaching others was a lie. I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't keep preaching the "God loves you" line when I looked around the world and evidence told me that not only did he/she not love us, but he/she likely didn't exist.
I remember seeing this video on MTV when the song originally came out decades ago, and, after severing ties with the church in the mid 90s, I heard this song again on the radio. Since then, it has become one of my favorites. Caution to those that are light of heart: it is quite blasphemous, but it sums up quite a lot of my thoughts on God and religion. The video has the lyrics subtitled at the bottom of the screen as well. Some pretty powerful stuff.
I was raised in a very strict, religious family. I was giving public sermons in front of my local congregation at the age of four. I was knocking on doors, preaching the "good news of God's kingdom" on Saturday mornings soon thereafter. I knew the Bible, inside and out, and could quote hundreds of verses by the time I entered grade school. I was brainwashed.
It only got worse as I grew older. My sermons became more complex and more in depth. I was offering prayer before the congregation, which was a pretty big deal.
As I grew older, and wiser, I started to realize that everything I was taught and everything I was teaching others was a lie. I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't keep preaching the "God loves you" line when I looked around the world and evidence told me that not only did he/she not love us, but he/she likely didn't exist.
I remember seeing this video on MTV when the song originally came out decades ago, and, after severing ties with the church in the mid 90s, I heard this song again on the radio. Since then, it has become one of my favorites. Caution to those that are light of heart: it is quite blasphemous, but it sums up quite a lot of my thoughts on God and religion. The video has the lyrics subtitled at the bottom of the screen as well. Some pretty powerful stuff.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Einstein: God Is Nothing More Than Human Weakness
I've heard people say that Einstein was a religious man. Many people say that it is possible to be a man of faith and a man of science. If Einstein was capable of being a man of faith, and perhaps the greatest mind the world has ever seen, there may be truth to it.
I have been following a blog calledLetters of Note in recent weeks. It features primarily historical letters from historical figures. The letters are mostly entertaining, thought provoking, or historically noteworthy. The following is from their posting from October 7th. It is a letter from Albert Einstein to philosopher Erik Gutkind after reading his book, 'Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt'. The feature that makes this website interesting is that they have a photocopy of the letter itself, followed by the transcript. The transcript reads as follows:
"Princeton, 3. 1. 1954
Dear Mr Gutkind,
Inspired by Brouwer’s repeated suggestion, I read a great deal in your book, and thank you very much for lending it to me ... With regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common. Your personal ideal with its striving for freedom from ego-oriented desires, for making life beautiful and noble, with an emphasis on the purely human element ... unites us as having an “American Attitude.”
Still, without Brouwer’s suggestion I would never have gotten myself to engage intensively with your book because it is written in a language inaccessible to me. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong ... have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them.
In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision...
Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e. in our evaluation of human behavior ... I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.
With friendly thanks and best wishes,
Yours,
A. Einstein"
Apparently, Einstein did see some value in the Bible, but no more than one would see in, say, Aesop's Fables. So, can a man of faith be a man of science? Do science and religion mix? Einstein didn't think so.
I have been following a blog calledLetters of Note in recent weeks. It features primarily historical letters from historical figures. The letters are mostly entertaining, thought provoking, or historically noteworthy. The following is from their posting from October 7th. It is a letter from Albert Einstein to philosopher Erik Gutkind after reading his book, 'Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt'. The feature that makes this website interesting is that they have a photocopy of the letter itself, followed by the transcript. The transcript reads as follows:
"Princeton, 3. 1. 1954
Dear Mr Gutkind,
Inspired by Brouwer’s repeated suggestion, I read a great deal in your book, and thank you very much for lending it to me ... With regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common. Your personal ideal with its striving for freedom from ego-oriented desires, for making life beautiful and noble, with an emphasis on the purely human element ... unites us as having an “American Attitude.”
Still, without Brouwer’s suggestion I would never have gotten myself to engage intensively with your book because it is written in a language inaccessible to me. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong ... have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them.
In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision...
Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e. in our evaluation of human behavior ... I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.
With friendly thanks and best wishes,
Yours,
A. Einstein"
Apparently, Einstein did see some value in the Bible, but no more than one would see in, say, Aesop's Fables. So, can a man of faith be a man of science? Do science and religion mix? Einstein didn't think so.
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