The Loss of Faith

Below the bridge of faith is littered with the bones of those who thought they had it.

What is the difference between thinking you have faith and having it, for all you “never were a real Christian” people? There are no former believers—just atheists and agnostics who at one time thought they believed.

To investigate your faith means you’ve already lost it. To purposely eye the underpinnings is to admit you don’t actually trust it. Trust that!

Real faith is blind and those who actually think they see are most blinded by it. To profess your faith means you’ve already lost it and seek validation. Independence is a hard thing swallowed, but your faith was your own. It cannot be transmitted nor can it be hidden away in silence.

To dare into the infrastructure mean you have already outgrown it. The paradox lies in knowing, vs the insecurity of being quiet.

Real faith lies at the bottom, in the bones of those who dared to believe and actually tested the words. Had they only done some research before buying and had dared to use reason and respond to that with honesty.

“Suppression of beliefs is detrimental irrespective of their truth status. If the belief is true, suppressing it will hamper true descriptions of the world. If the belief is false, the assertion of false beliefs will lead to debate which in turn may lead to and deepen understanding of true beliefs. Finally, most of us can rarely see the whole truth, particularly when it comes to social, religious, and political discourse, so the only way of approaching it is through “reconciling and combining of opposites.” So whatever the epistemic status of a belief, suppressing it is harmful to the discovery of truth”—John Stuart Mill

Photo by Mak—Maasaiboys.wordpress

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What is God and Why It’s Not

Sacredness is not a relationship with belief. This is a categorical error. Beliefs are simply ideas we like to think on then entertain out of preference—then wrongly cling to out of credulous insecurity. Belief is needed because it is not real. Quantum Theory is the closest thing to real that the general population has been exposed to. It demonstrates what is unseen by the senses—this is god.

Highly charged emotional states or chemically enhanced experience may at times give one a glimpse into the hidden portions of reality. This is no more spiritual than your normal existence—it is only different. Calling it a deity is supposing that anything outside our normal perceptions is god, when in reality the process of evolution has not seen fit to expose more than the needed perceptions to eat and reproduce.

That the ground of being is some kind of entity is a fundamental mistake. There may be something underneath it all but it is not a being, it IS being. It is the way things grow or become—no-thing knows how it is done or that it is doing it. Like how you grow your hair or raise your hand. You just do it never knowing how. This is god, if there is such a thing, which I just explained is not a thing.

The idea that god is a being is a projection from our individual aspects of form, which is not too far off the truth. Not as individuals but as apertures of the whole. Every bit is meaningful to us because every bit is the one thing.

Driving with the top down at the speed of life can get a little messy. Getting a glimpse now and the can be rewarding but not meaningful—it doesn’t do anything and is at odds with evolutionary fitness. Plus there is actual thrill in not knowing—this is what makes the Great Mystery meaningful. What point would actually be meaningful if there was no mystery?

If there are entities that know more than we, this is god until we realize they only have different evolutionary hacks and perceptions, a different peep hole into the objective reality that we see vey little of. To see 10% more may very well overload the circuitry and distract evolutionary fitness as we know it.

What we don’t see may or may not be more advanced or better, but simply outside our sensory perceptions and immiscible. We would be as much a mystery to them as they are to us—unless they have evolved to see things they cannot interact with, like watching tv.

Deb Schell, Missouri

The Art of Nothing

Is seems religion has an edge on atheism. How does one continue to embellish on unbelief? What new ideas can we pull out of thin air to aggrandize a negative? There are no assumptions to defend, no miracles to fantasize, no mythical beasts or gods to rewrite, revise, conjecture, or expand.

Religion is science fiction with a penalty, where believing the right fiction is coupled with an unlimited license to caricature your wildest dreams into a human right—where making god more better and more powerful than anyone can imagine—right up until someone reimagines it.

God has evolved in my lifetime to incorporate the ontology of science and atheist philosophers. They get it all. Every idea of existence can be attributed to this mythology. You win. I have no deity to defend.

Even the best argument for nothing is laid waist by belief and tradition. Never failing to take credit for solving your existential anxieties—which tend to solve themselves anyway. All bleeding eventually stops. But give god his due. It is you who solves the crisis and always has been. It’s too bad the men of words cannot give credit to you for your own course corrections.

Grace or Faith? One Cannot Rely on the Other

Faith is the mental effort to believe. According to research, during a typical day, a person uses about 320 calories just to think. Different mental states and tasks can subtly affect the way the brain consumes energy. Applying effort to the belief in things you don’t know, raises additional strain on cerebral energy consumption. Is this not works? Is not this something you do?

Additionally, the mental wrangling required to believe in deities is indeed effort. To outsmart the contradictions of the Hebrew religion also induces stress and issues of self worth, further adding to “works”.

Faith in Jesus is works. Contradictions 9:17 Apologetics is even further efforts that contradict the biblical promise.

Grace and faith are ideas in opposition that require caloric effort. The only way to evade that is faith like an atheist—total trust in letting go. Only then can grace be achieved through unbelief—through no effort whatsoever.

Triangulating Your Position

Spending a considerable amount of time cross-country in the backcountry, it was inevitable at some point I would get lost. Tis why I carry a handy topo map and compass.

If you are familiar with maps and finding your bearings, it takes three points of reference and a preferably a compass to triangulate your position.

Using GPS it takes three measurements from the satellites to your receiver to identify where you are located—a fourth measure can pin it down to a foot or two.

The point where all three circles intersect is your position.

Religion is no different and having only one point of reference, you are in fact, lost—

Having two points of reference can get you in the ballpark (near the warning track) while having three points you’ll know exactly where you stand. It is in fact a necessity it every point of reason. Another option—stick with any one belief point on the globe which is always seems like the center, but is nowhere at the same time—like being born into the only thing you know.

Culture can be illustrated in the same way. When the untraveled declare their home to be the best place on earth, it is obvious to the well traveled it isn’t. Being exposed to multiple facets of humanity one starts to realize his own insignificance when that point of reference is unheard of to the rest of the world—and they are just fine not knowing you or your beliefs even exist.

Without another point of reference there is no way whatsoever to know where you are, while at the same time KNOW, that your religion is the right one. Sincerely Yours, The Faith Trap

The less one knows the more sure one can be of his position.

Suspending Disbelief

Understandium via pretendium.

As a reader or listener of any story we undergo what is called a willing suspension of disbelief as an attempt to understand the narration, trust the narrator, and interpret why the story is being told toward some underlying idea.

This suspension temporarily undermines suspicion. We are encouraged to have an open mind, but can we honestly do that then resurrect our senses at the end of the drama?

To enjoy any theme demands this—to let fiction entertain for a time is to insight the intent of the author to glean whatever underlying meaning for ourselves that can be siphoned off for future use or self improvement, or to simply be entertained.

This suspension of disbelief is a key point of christianity—the actors and storytellers now expect you to live in this state as a virtuous arrival at something, which is nothing at all.

In real life the story was rejected because it didn’t happen that way, but stories are as plentiful as those who believe them—and grow accordingly to the need that human foibles project into real life what lacks substance by any other view.

If there is any value in the Christ narrative it is this—to temporarily suspend doubt to repose some allegorical meaning or entertain some wishful daydream to escape the doldrums and insecurities of life and death. To demand it’s permanence is to stick humanity right where it is today—stuck in the past arguing a point that gave hope to despair, in which each is a symptom of the other.

Permanently suspending disbelief is impossible, for everyone is already an atheist. Trusting your doubt is as natural as temporarily suspending it to enjoy the show, but it isn’t meant as a permanent state of living—it doesn’t lead anywhere.

Things are not what they seem when you flip ‘em over. Our brains construct reality.

Flip the photo.

Religion and Ignorance—Belief or Arrogance?

“If religion were clear, it would have fewer attractions for the ignorant. They need obscurity, mysteries, fables, miracles, incredible things which keep their brains perpetually at work. Romances, idle stories, tales of ghosts and witches, have more charm for the vulgar than true narrations—Jean Messlier

“In order to be effective, a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength—If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague. If neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable”—Eric Hoffer

In the matter of religion, men are but overgrown children. The more absurd the religion is, and the fuller of marvels, the more power it exerts, the devotee thinks himself obliged to place no limits to his credulity; the more inconceivable things are, the more divine they appear to him; the more incredible they are, the more merit he gives himself for believing them”—Jean Messlier—The Testament

The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit the earth and the kingdom of heaven too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen will perish—Eric Hoffer

Fossilized Blue Amber

The Replacements

In a hundred or so years every living human being will be dead and replaced with brand new souls god has created for his puppy mill, to test those same souls with an age old game—to see if they’ll simply believe. Finding the correct belief is paramount to continuation or damnation. It all makes perfect sense.

Where to put all these souls?

I’m confident the new crew will fit right in (barely) and adjust to their cages. It’s an interesting test, this god of the Hebrews has devised. With freewill diminishing in every generation, let’s hope grades are based on the curve.

Facebook and Friends

Some people make themselves really difficily to like on Facebook. Here are some recent shares by one—I think Jesus is ready to roll the stone back over his tomb and take up death.

Wouldn’t it be nice if they were held accountable for the promises they preach?

This guy is from South Africa. If anyone thinks the US has religion problems, march in to Pretoria…In Jesus name, of course.

Faith in Atheism

I took some flack a while back linking those two words together. I don’t always ask questions because I already know the answer, but is there a point in unbelief that requires faith, in this case, of a young, lifelong casual believer (thanks grandma) who recently decided he’s an atheist, based on a few arguments from a well known celebrity?

He didn’t come to this conclusion based on inadequate religion, gnawing contradictions or of unanswered prayer, etc, but by believing a cleverly worded argument of a well known person. Is this not a show of faith?

Granted, as Rapar stated, “Atheism is the lack of faith like cold is simply the lack of heat, not a natural state of its own“.

And Tildeb; “WTF? What is that bit all about? Creating a false dichotomy here doesn’t create a more ‘balanced’ opinion; it creates another ‘I’m an atheist, but…’ apologist with a drive by smear at those who have every reason to grant experts higher degrees of confidence in their informed opinions. That’s not ‘faith’ of the religious kind at all Jim, and you should know this by now”

Do I need identify what kind of faith I don’t have? How can you not believe something you haven’t investigated? Have you ever had faith? Have you ever been a believer because of indoctrinating parents?His atheism certainly is faith of a religious kind.

Our culture puts onus our way, a weird position to consider belief as a positive and unbelief as its opposite. But we are unnaturally forced to consider belief and make a decision. I would think an informed decision would make a stronger position. This young man is ripe to fall into a Ray Comfort-style trap, just as he did a Joe Rogan.

So, after this I might rephrase, that his faith is not in atheism, but his atheism is faith in the opinion of the celebrity. Because I guarantee in this case, he knows not enough of either, belief or unbelief to really be a believer or a non.

Damnation—Owned With Honor

The past is a memory—the future an expectation—both only exist in the present—in your mind. Christian religions believe in the damnation of souls—hell, which is happening right now in Christianity. Are they are the dammed, and they live among us. No need to wait til your dead when you can have it now through faith.

Resisting the flow of progress, anchored to the past like it’s a virtue. Arguing every social advance, hoping someone will come and save them—but he will not save them from themselves. I can’t think of a better example of damnation than the current Islamic and Christian doctrines.

It would have been possible through Christianity if…if they really knew what the good news was all about. But they put the messenger on a pedestal and suppressed the message. Jesus is the only son of god—no more! The church immediately became irrelevant by holding on to monotheism. They are now nothing but talking shops, void of meaningful liturgy, void of any meaningful religious experience. Damned, in every sense of the word.

Cracking the Code

If evolution is true, there have never been any mistakes in natural processes. Therefore, there are no mistakes in nature—only comfort, discomfort, or boredom. And, what gives one discomfort is someone else’s happy place.

We have been influenced heavily to accept evolution with a Hebrew-rooted twist, a sense of good and evil as a product of law—that there is a right and a wrong (even in nature) and choosing sides has become accentuated by the spreading of the good news. But there are really no laws in nature.

If the abrahamic religions are true, we have to make a faith statement—that what is true is superior to what is known—that what is believed is superior to reason or logical conclusion. Or, that contradictions are a natural process of heaven.

If we assume for a moment that the Big Bang is exactly how it happened, that we evolved into this or that, it would also conclude that we are many that stemmed from one, that we are all connected by a common event. We are a herd-bound species. Is that a result of survival in evolution, or because out of the one we became the many? That our primordial state was singular.

If we are the result of a cataclysmic event, eventually collecting enough space debris and luck to form planets and galaxies, isn’t our inertial state that of a single mind (needs defining) as well?

We can make a faith statement, that our individuality is a result of evolution—that what was, is not what is. Or we can make another, like Christianity’s stance that we are all separate individuals responsible for our decisions, that it is you, a single soul, a separate ego here on sufferance, while simultaneously providing a place to gather. Its a neat trick to use fear to isolate and use that same fear to couple.

If one prefers to be Christian and believe in evolution, you have to say god used evolution as a means of creation, that should, eventually produce the children of god, then it should be easy to accept all the differences a billion years of biologic variations would produce in the human mind.

Working on the plumbing.

Physics and Mystics

After centuries of two opposing (wrong) philosophies, it seems change is just too hard on pride—they will accept anything but this.

Robert Oppenheimer is reported to have said, “If we cannot disprove Bohm, then we must agree to ignore him.”—and ignore him they did. But why? Because Bohm’s theory of quantum potential threw a wrench in the hierarchy of accepted science, unifying physics with what mystics have known for millennia—its all one process. There are no separate events in nature, which means the universe is one organism. This is god—and nothing known or seen or felt is not—which actually means, there is nothing that is not connected, its all one—it’s a process—and you too, are it.

This is not the deity god of traditional misinterpretation—it is the fact that there are no partitions between any event, place, or material—that there are no things, only demarcations on an imaginary line through calculus. Where does one event begin or another end? Only in our attempts to interpret non-existent laws into symbols. Where math and the word becomes the reality instead of the symbol of it. Where Hebrew thought infiltrates science to its core to believe there must be actual laws of nature. But there are none—merely observable regularities through something regular—where clocks and rulers attempt to demarcate a connected process through a specific point of view—then put it into words.

If the Christian is right, then Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, and atheists, are wrong. When so many groups disagree, the majority must be mistaken. And if the majority is misguided on just this one topic, then almost everyone must be mistaken on some issues of great importance.

This is a hard lesson to learn, because it is paradoxical to accept one’s own folly. You cannot at the same time believe something and recognize that you are a chump to believe it. A sucker born every minute, but somehow that sucker is never oneself.

“Building on the interpretation of the quantum theory introduced by Bohm in 1952, David Bohm and Basil Hiley in 1975 presented how the concept of a quantum potential leads to the notion of an “unbroken wholeness of the entire universe” Science will continue to struggle along with this notion that it can observe itself, but you’d have just as much luck observing whats behind your eyes when you’re looking out. It’s the only logical conclusion. Observing a process changes it simply because you—are observing you, and that changes the experiment and it can’t be pinned down. The only way to properly observe the true nature of anything in its static form, is to do it without looking at it—and it can’t be done. But we can at least demarcate the highlights we choose to like, based on the proper stimulus that agrees with our anchoring bias.

Why Religion Endures

Spiritual disciplines, prayers, meditations, faith, songs, yogas, biblical study, and all forms of scripture, are ways of persisting in folly—doing over and over what you’re doing already, will eventually make you…wise? Yes, but it’s not how you think.

To exhaust all attempts at spiritual knowledge is to finally see the absurdity. Adherents need at last, to take this belief seriously. That is the only way out, as evidenced by those who have already left.

It is akin to convincing a flat-earther the world is round—you must let them walk, due-west as far as it takes for them to see it on their own—when they wind up right back where they started. Field test the words, live it, I mean, finally give it your true attention and quit dabbling in commandments and guilt, and you will see if for what it is—it is nothing at all but a donkey following a virtual carrot. It will last forever because no one takes it seriously.

“Every church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all”—Thomas Paine

The appeal to faith was a masterful play on the foibles of human psychology. One is not compelled to test, only to believe. Until it is tested it will endure.

Those who are weak in their atheism aren’t much different—believing the experts and catchy memes is no foundation to shout about either. I am mostly convinced that the two questions are wrong, but I know not what they should be.

The Element of Illusion

First let me preface, I am an atheist. There are arguments for “something else”, but I don’t know what that means. I am not protective of my atheism (finding what people call god would be a prize winning effort) but I do struggle with the term and how it’s been defined beyond the reach of understanding.

Life itself is some type of illusion (deceived by our own relativity?) What you see on the surface seems so real and tangible (mass) yet is hardly anything tangible at all but energy (what is that?) and According to Einstein, energy and mass are equivalent (that’s the message of E=mc2) But our interpretation of how solid an object is purely relative. How would we know any different than what we are relative to our surroundings (insert puddle analogy) It seems so “there”, but is only a form of energy, which we know little about.

In physics, the kinetic energy (KE) of an object is the energy that it possesses due to its motion. KE= 1/2 mv2. In emergency medicine, we alway want to know how fast the car was going, etc, so the severity of injury and patterns can be predicted. Stopping that motion releases a lot of joules, and how quickly it stops is the difference between life and death.

Earth is energy in form, hurling through orbit at 66,000 mph and spinning—and the energies accumulated to reach that speed it still possesses.

Ideas on the other hand, have no energy. Life has evolved into the lazy mans game, gaining 90% of our knowledge by opinions and papers, instead of experience. There is little horse-sense applied to solving problems, but persuasion turned to belief rules the culture. While utility inspired the idea, now the idea has a life of its own. Man, now disconnected from his environment lives in a life of barriers—and through opinion develops ideas on how to master that environment.

Since the idea has no mass, the end of arguing over beliefs would drown without a whimper—no explosions or mass casualties. It would be like cancelling church during a pandemic. Would anybody have even noticed if it weren’t for a few showmen insistent on keeping there ideas alive for cash flow?

Anyway, Christian influence has the world at odds—because of belief (everyone is compelled to take sides) The appeal to faith also uses no energy, but is the path of least resistance where belief now trumps utility—now the way of the world. The nature that evolved the man no longer exists. There were more sustainable philosophies, but it appears to be too late for that. We are now in the puddle of belief, and for most of the world it’s a perfect fit.

What Really Was The Good News?

The awareness of full consciousness—that same ethereal beginning that has been the primer for many religions, cultures, counter cultures, shaman, and silent men and women since time immemorial, has dominated the landscape of thought since man could put into words.

Since the religion is now and forever about following Jesus instead of his message, shows his followers did not understand “the good news” any more than the modern day followers of Jesus. Then, shortly after his death, the intellectual transfer to the stupor of faith, counterfeited the mystery to carefully guard the irrelevance of the church. Now “ever learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth“. Welcome to belief in faith.

The early church opted for idol worship and sequestered Jesus—the only true son of god, which stopped the real gospel in its tracks. We certainly can’t have anyone else running around like gods, can we? So for now we simply have been persuaded we can never measure up, relegating ourselves to hoping for grace—which was never the point. But alas, now you can never compare yourself to Jesus no matter what the effort—or be the heretic, for only He and god are one, but that too, was never the point.

When Christianity institutionalized Jesus as the one, it essentially ensured castration—the gospel will never usher in the kingdom of god on earth—so we have look elsewhere.

So what secret was he trying to reveal? It had to be subtle, for like so many others that claimed I AM were put to death by revealing what we really are—showing how ignorance can easily blaspheme the truth.

 John 10:34—”Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;

36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the a Son of God?” (In the Greek he is a son of God, not the son of god. Italics in the KJV delineates translator interpolation, not emphasis—and in this case incorrectly. A son of god means our immortal existence is a coexistence of equals, not a monarchy. We are all of the same status, and deep down I think most of us (you) know this.

The term “son of god” in the original context implies “equal in nature and authority to god”.

Psalm 82:6 I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.

The ultimate reality—that all of us are each the cosmic whole. The great mystics have all seen this. This is the central mystery Jesus wanted us to see.

Although writers are constrained by the language and religious bias of their culture (using familiar terms like father, and He) Jesus was one who knew the game and that universal and everlasting life is wonderfully crafted and masterfully—us

This ideal state of intellectual and ethereal perfection can be achieved by mankind through purely human means that takes no belief to achieve—for it is a method that can be taught. But who will listen? Certainly not me, the sinner. I could never be like god, so follow the leader we must?

But the things he did we were also to do—“even greater things than these“, but we’ll never do it when we substitute our true nature for faith and idol worship.

So here we are. Here I AM, as those who know have known for a long time. There is no monarchial boss or patriarchal authority. It is an endless happening. Life is what we do. It is what we are.

The good news is not simply that Jesus was a son of god, but to open everyone’s eyes that they are too. Equal measures of the whole thing. I and the ethereal are one. It doesn’t help that the word ‘God’ has been hijacked to mean what it means. If we’re going to participate as who we actually are, a new word would help.

If I were to believe in god, I never will see it nor be it.

The Christian definitions of god and father hierarchy are at odds with the experience. If you were to get a peek behind the curtain and see that it is you—you are the whole thing, you would look at people differently, knowing full well that they are too, but they haven’t learned how to grasp it? Wouldn’t that make you smile, knowing how simply and effectively we have fooled ourselves for the moment? That there is no hierarchy or intimate bosses taking notes on your behavior?

But really, this is all a necessary component of the physical experience. If everybody recognized this we’d have the kingdom of god on earth. That would be silly to have it “be done on earth as it is in heaven”. So we stick with faith and worship the messenger instead of experience the whole of the message. It can’t possibly be our doing, can it? That would mean personal responsibility. We’d rather follow the gurus which is obvious because that’s what humans do—look outside themselves for validation.

God Manifest in Jesus?

There may be God, but is it what believers think it is? There is an odd problem in being led to believe faith is the pinnacle of religious experience. Because the mysteries of Jesus (whoever wrote them) that are encoded in the Biblical text, have nothing to do with faith—but that which is behind the thin veil of this performance is something real, yet mostly indecipherable for the duration of the game. God isn’t manifest in Jesus, but god is manifest in the Bible—just not the god they think it is.

Many other systems of religion attempt to awaken being, and within the biblical text there are clues that resonate with this process, yet are not Christian in nature. The problem lay twofold; the interpretations of the experience being heavily biased toward the culture and anchoring beliefs of the initiate—in this case Hebrew, then, Christianity restricts the process by clinging to faith, counterfeiting a temporary waypoint as a final destination—it actually arrives at nothing and always will. It’s a law for layman to remain laymen. “But to you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given“—Mt 13:11

Through unbelief the experience is generic, is not the god of your fathers, nor a display of patriarchal hierarchy in any way or form. It’s not even religious, although it is moving.

Faith is what holds Christianity in darkness and division. One cannot seek to find, nor can one employ hard beliefs to be awakened. Real faith is actually letting go—letting go of all the gods, beliefs, efforts, and compliance to commandments (or the reliance on grace) as an achievement. It has to be real faith—the faith of an atheist. For faith is not clinging, but letting go. Letting go is the first step and a clean slate, while those who hold on to the image of god will never see that faith is the problem.

The awakening doesn’t require belief, but to the contrary. Belief is merely another attachment to an idea (as well as atheism?) and through strong faith the experience becomes less likely than ever.

The concept of faith is even surpassed by the wisdom and philosophies of the Indian medicine wheel. But to be strong in faith is to play on words that make the initiate too weak to see its restrictions, let alone divine comprehension.

“Crazy Horse went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that one”—Black Elk

And it is not a god, but a play, a happening of participants and watchers. We are the whole thing. And like each pixel of the hologram contains the entire picture, so it is with us. “I and the father are one“, but it is not the biblical god, the whole thing is me. It is the me that is not the me of bones and skin, heart and lungs, which cannot die or be removed without the entire game collapsing. Pretty neat trick.

Birthday canvas from my daughter—2020

On Free Will—In the Beginning

If we are born sinners by nature and regardless of our effort—subject to sin, we would have no freewill to be “sinless,” especially since we are intellectually damaged long before we understand concepts of evil in a religious sense.

Adam and Eve were created with the capacity for disobedience, but the real crime would be god creating men and women who are gullible, easily tricked by whimsical rules, clever speech, flattery (and shiny things) Whose fault is that?

”it is God that worketh in us to will and to do“—Phil. 2:13

Since god is using sin to accomplish his will, is it possible that sin is not evil at all, but merely a label of semantics—a certain set of arbitrary rules for the game? Only by the establishment of these random rules in which the human mind is ineptly programmed to adapt, sin would be the plan all along, manufactured by god.

As a non believer in any religions god, do I have the freewill to truly believe? Simply giving my mind to appease society or my own insecurities would ultimately be pretending to believe.

Then, if I do decide to believe—who cares? Hundreds of thousands of churches closed for the pandemic…I never noticed. Me thinks they have overrated their necessity.

The New Theists

Working their way back to Jesus by reading old theists, the New Theists© are determined to true the tried and failed—like running the hamster wheel backwards will make a difference. But no worries, it hasn’t gone far. Just superficial arguing.

While theism is belief in god, atheism is simply pointing out how that’s not The Way by its perpetual stall. We’re on our own here which is proven daily. The trick is to break the spell of faith as a destination and drop the dead weight that has kept humanity—waiting.

Each new generation inherits a deeper pool of contradictions to proudly buoy their faith. Then with the mental fortitude of a champion juggler, prove they can believe against all odds.

Not so long ago Christianity began its final, divisive act. Not against the unbeliever (far too watered down now for that) but against each other. Every man creating his own doctrine and defining his own god and idol. “A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided it is weakened”—Thomas Paine

Every Christian seems to know the others are believing it wrong. Maybe it’s time to realize themselves are included. But that is the way of the church—it’s what happens when starting with an errant premise.

“Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form, instead of fact—of notion, instead of principles“—Thomas Paine

Faces in the fires

Resigning To Faith

“Faith is consent without evidence to that which is opposed by reason“—Jean Meslier

Enduring faith—bridled to a single, vulnerable moment in the past now sustained by layers upon layers of dismissal. Rarely any reasonable explanation will change the miracle (even by the obvious) in the mind of the believer.

A trauma or high point of conviction, an anchoring bias coupled with endless persuasion until it is the only option you know in depth—no other doctrine is welcomed now, for through the automatic rebuttal feature, faith is the closure of a once opened mind. For the child of the earth that could entertain a myriad of possibilities, now has but a few ways in which to conform.

Naturoglyphs in the canyon

Knowledge will not be had by dismissing even one errant point. There is only one, contradictory free, ultimate truth in the universe. Can we follow that path without waving off a bit here and there, but turn only where the evidence leads? It cannot be done post acquiescence to religious faith—and it will take natures children to realize it before the sidetracking of beliefs settle in to the long haul of conformity.

On Doctrine

“In order to be effective, a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength“—Eric Hoffer

A doctrine to be effective must be viewed from the heart, not from the brain, to maintain staying power.

“The devout are always urged to seek truth with their hearts and not their minds”

Rudolph Hess, when swearing in the entire Nazi party in 1934, exhorted the hearers: “Do not seek Adolf Hitler with your brains—all of you will find him with the strength of your hearts”.

It is obvious today more than ever that the true believer is just that—a believer that doesn’t understand the doctrine. Everyone else is doing it wrong sounds familiar, and many Christians are now despising Christianity—the outcome of the doctrine.

When we fully understand the doctrine (like we do the nazi party) we can no longer believe in it based on its historical and current condition—we capitulate to self doubt, ride it out, or leave.

“Atheism is proof that the doctrine can eventually be understood”. That is evidenced in the current exodus.

Spending a lifetime ironing the contradiction of abrahamic religion is imperative from the beginning that conundrums existed to sustain the longevity of the movement.

“If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague. If neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable”—Eric Hoffer

To secure a lasting movement, Christianity incorporated all three—and the proof is in its longevity.

It’s hard to imagine that this trifecta was accidental, since every single point of doctrine is Alpha and Omega of contradiction.

License plate Jesus home near me

Hormones vs The Five Senses—And the Winner Is?

Clinging to faith is to test what we actually see, against sentiments we can only feel (or think we feel) It is to dismiss our five senses to put trust in a chemically induced emotional response. Then, step by step we carefully absorb what another has felt through his own chemical release—by the art of storytelling.

“And the men of words carefully embellish the story to elicit excretions”

The problem with trusting the hormonal response? It is more powerful than anybody’s intention, resistance, or intuition. As proof we look to the hormone who has populated the earth to the tune of 7.8 Billion, against marathons of religious warning, driving countless souls to breed even when they knew the risk of hellfire, disease, or poverty.

“In the land of the blind, Enucleation is the corrective surgery”—Marshall McLuhan

Faith admonishes humanity to abandon the common senses for a less reliable one—feelings dispensed by acute events, driving each individual endocrine system and mental sensitivity (a night at the movies is the simplest observation) tugging your Jesus strings can be easily accomplished, even with known fiction.

Corrective lenses or hearing aids is a fairly easy fix for faulty sight and sound, but hormones simply require testimony and the right cadence with the right timing. Belief is supposed to heal the soul. But which of your other senses can be enhanced with repetitive persuasion? What truth anywhere requires a specific timing or carefully crafted event to become true? Catastrophe can also dispense the hormone. Then, as long as the men of words are there to tell us what it all means by god [sic] we can trust the gospel message as authentic—because dopamine always feels right, right?

Faith is believing the hormonal response is more valid than our primary audio-visual and tactile senses.

The fact is this; the expansion of the gospel required swordplay to achieve dominance, not its ideas. A great way to open a gland is to receive violence followed by salvation. That relief alone, whether from physical or emotional trauma, step by step bolsters faith by secretions.

Have you ever seen a touching scene in a movie, knowing full well it is fiction and felt that same feeling from a good sermon? What if the credits falsely labeled the movie “based on a true story?” Monotheism in a nutshell.

Hormones are a predictably unreliable benchmark for faith…in anything, and much too powerful to wield without understanding the emotion and conviction of faith are simply drip-fed in micrograms—or is it really the Holy Spirit?

Understanding even the basics of the endocrine system may be enough to keep you on the level—unless they got to you too early… The beautiful part about not feeling the emotion they try to elicit (through the storytelling) is now you’re under condemnation over failing to secrete when they say the magic words.

Christianity—Self Evidenced

“I see nothing here that would invalidate Michaels argument“.

Of course not! Christianity and Islam have effectively killed original thought by making copycats. And if you openly don’t believe it, prepare for the subtle witness or the all out testimony. The programming is fixed. Resistance is futile. Every knee will bow!

“Commonsense tells me he (Hoffer) won’t have referred to most Christians” The beauty of Christianity is its Autobias and built in A.R.S. (Automatic Rebuttal Syndrome) while Christianity and Islam are the epitome of successful mass movement, beginning with an archetypal enemy, a devil (or the status quo)

1. Radical idea that challenges the controlling powers
2. Adopted by those in power.
3. Used as a tool to absorb countless cultures
3. Creating new zealots to stand behind the religion (which is now the state)
4. Goes out in force to do the works of evil in the name of good (the conversion of Europe and Latin America) It is all very predictable that the new movement will become the enemy they hated.

Here is the quote in question on whether Christianity is well played mass movement—”Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents … Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”—Eric Hoffer

Atheism will never be a mass movement. If anything it bolsters Christian defenses and gives them another bogey man to rally against. Hitler had the jews to unify several competing foes, while Christianity has Islam (and atheism) while Islam uses the West as its eternal threat which anchors the longevity of the movement.

Denaturing Faith—A Return to Civility

“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand“—Bertrand Russell

Isn’t it amusing that so many faithful cannot connect a line of simple dots outside their own beliefs, but think they’re smart enough to know the Christian conundrums are the true gospel of god?

They act like we have never read the material—but if we only hear it enough ways (their interpretation of the clever mans intent) finally, we’ll understand. I don’t believe Christianity because I don’t understand it, I don’t believe it because I do understand it.

By appealing first to faith, anything is possible in the world of religion and decent men have risen to horrible because of it. It demands no scrutiny nor reason, and is simply true because they want it to be, especially when the merciless belief pandemics have had their strongest hold.

“We should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world”—Bertrand Russell

Who now is left to resist the principle of faith that has proven time and again to be the catalyst for ordinary men to be horrible. Fortunately the religion is now so watered down it has proven incapable of enforcement, but that doesn’t keep them from trying to get us back to where we were. The dark ages were not torturous because of unfaithfulness, but because people really believed it.

Rites of Passage

Hope is the lowest level of the awakening state.

The next step is developing a faith that your hope will produce results.

Finally there is knowing. Knowing comes from applying faith and achieving the desired results.

We are currently screwed. Forever stuck in faith—no evidence—no desired outcomes—merely a false sense of enlightenment while the world still fights—that, is strongly evidenced. Divided we stand at the exit door of beliefs, waiting for the promises to arrive. We did all those things, now we near the end of the ride bewildered.

Is it too late to trade for a different model, or do we cling to time wasted like a cherished life-lesson in mediocrity?

Religion has closed off the rights of passage by turning the middle phase to the pinnacle of religious experience. Faith is merely a waypoint, not a destination, now forever stuck in the initiation phase—and the arrival at nothing. A true religion would prepare its members to be independent, to be real men and women of accomplishment through Weyekin, a vision quest, or a meaningful journey to test their readiness.

Even our children in this western culture have no defining moments of passage. They simply sit and slowly osmose their way to adulthood by navigating hoops in a system of baseless protections in nothing but belief, accepting disappointment as their fathers did, for god is testing their faith by cheating us from the final phase.

Now the test is to believe failure is endemic of gods will for humanity.

Is Earth Really Flat?

Insisting the earth is flat? It matters where you get your information, but some solutions are frankly simple, and can be done on your own if you choose.

Colorstorm is insisting the earth is flat—that if it was round the Suez Canal would have to be dug out 1666 feet to account for the curvature, and for water to flow 100 miles from sea level to sea level. Without that massive dig the Suez would have to flow uphill, both directions. This is christian-think™️, where belief is steady and the flat earth doesn’t turn.

Because there is a “crest” illustrated by curvature does not mean “uphill” on a gravitational sphere. If your mind is clinging to scientific conspiracy, listen carefully—The surface of the water is equipotential. It has the same distance to the Earth’s center of gravity. It is not necessary to dig 1666 ft in the middle of the Suez Canal, only sea level to sea level and follow the flow.

For something even simpler we look at the Bedford Level Experiment, where six miles of “flat earth” were demonstrated to be curved simply by using three tall platforms the same height, with one structure at the three mile mark. Then using a transit level showing the difference on the pole in the middle, confirming a crest.

Also, did you know gravity is a bit stronger at the poles, where centrifugal force is less than the equator? Yes, the earth is spinning. Did you know you weigh slightly less on mount Everest than at sea level because you’re farther from the gravitational constant? Eventually, as you leave the gravitational pull, away from the core you become weightless like a space probe.

Finally, easily illustrated by things we see every day, the columns on long suspension bridges are level, but not perpendicular to each other. They are closer to each other at the bottom than at the top, tilting slightly away from each other on the sphere.

But none of this matters to believers that ventured down the rabbit hole of conspiracy belief. The only evidence in Colostrums Bag© of tricks, is evidence that faith is a conundrical trap made for zealots.

Faith vs Integrity

The life of faith is in a race with integrity. The trick is to die before the vector of integrity is tempted to intersect faith before the finish line. Development of integrity can cost you your soul. Dying in unscrutinized belief is the safer bet. Have no fear. Your faith is the sure safety that nothing will change until you get your catastrophe.

Meanwhile, be content in the outcomes of faith which we have witnessed now for two millennia. Don’t complain, and please no worries. This is the life you choose through belief.

“The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is the surrendering and humbling of the self breeds pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit the earth and the kingdom of heaven too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen will perish”—Eric Hoffer

“Ye are the light of the world”. What do you say to that when everything faith touches lives in a constant state of regression? Living in the past, hoping the future ends. Would a good god condemn you for truly not believing? Seems to me such integrity should be rewarded.

Reasons To Celebrate

The real miracle about evidence is the believers ability to dismiss what doesn’t agree with faith. That same faith that is simply an emotional attachment to an idea that, A: was forced upon them, or B: just feels right, or C: There are so many believers they can’t all be wrong, can they? There are more in there, I’m certain.

This New Year’s Eve, let’s drink to belief, anchoring bias, cognitive dissonance, and to evidence. Not just any evidence, mind you, but real evidence like chariot wheels in the Red Sea, the Shroud of Turin, the Golden Plates™️, Salamander Letters, The Cardiff Giant, Indian Guru Sai Baba’s Legerdemain, the discovery of Noah’s Ark, and the Ossuary of James, brother of Jesus.

All the above are faith promoting because of their fraudulent hoax. The religious love to downplay empirical evidence (until they think they have some) then will embrace pure junk as proof for god. Unwinding such toys is such a nuisance, so they then let them play out on their own.

With 100% certainty they EMBRACE empiricism and are its greatest champion, if they could actually present evidence that supports their beliefs. They then scream, look at the evidence!—JZ. They love evidence, but it first must support their belief. They love it so much they will clamor from sea to shining sea to get a glimpse of even the most outlandish display of quackery.

But who wants to prove themselves wrong in religion? Who will truly look beyond what they want to believe, or what they’ve been saddled with since childhood?

A toast 🥃 to the Apparitional Toast this New Years Eve, and all the best to us all for 2020—maybe a year to see clearly.

Testimony—Relieving Your Doubt Through Repetition

A testimony or “witnessing” is known as a statement that is based on personal experience or personal knowledge. A statement is accepted on the basis of person’s testimony if his or her asserting it renders it acceptable, ie; conviction, eloquence, or sincerity. We can also, rationally accept a claim on the basis of another person’s testimony unless at least one of the following is found to be true:

1 The claim is implausible;

2 The person or the source in which the claim is quoted lacks credibility;

3 The claim goes beyond what the person could know from his or her own experience and competence (children)

When it comes to testimony, how trustworthy are you, the source, in separating what you want to believe vs what you’ve been taught to believe vs the inherent bias of culture, demographics, and perception? If you know your church is “the one” sanctioned by Jesus, how can others know theirs is “the one” True Church© too. Maybe they’re coat-tailing on a bad idea? It’s happened before.

If you fallen to religion, just be grateful it wasn’t Jehovah’s Witness, Mormon, Catholic, AOG, Money Church of Osteen™️, Copeland, Dollar 🤡, Comfort or Ham. Id hate for you to look silly. And for the loners out there, your close. Really close.

As far as children witnessing for any religion, who’s testimony do you suppose they are they sharing? But it’s so cute… Hmm?

Faith vs Ethics

The greatest contribution of atheism is the provision of a firm basis for ethical conduct. Atheism explains that morality is a social obligation but not a passport to heaven and salvation. The theistic belief in divine retribution sidetracked moral behavior. Believers were more prone to please the god of their imagination by prayer and ritual than to conform to rules of moral conduct“—Ramachantra Rao

This is the dividing line between worship and personal responsibility. To please god is obedience to belief, even if it’s socially divisive. One excludes, the other includes. Doesn’t really matter what religion you believe, it is that you believe anything at all.

“We have the impulse to resist evil, but through faith permission is granted to inflict it. We step beyond the believers mindset; not content for their own sake, but like a dangerous meme is spread. Not out of genuine concern, but religious mimicry”.

Anosognosia and Religious Certainty

Anosognosia is a neurological deficit in self-awareness, a condition in which a person with a disability is unaware or in denial of its existence. This disability we are addressing today is belief—regarded as personal achievement or a high mental destination, where “I believe” has become the pinnacle of religious thought. But what is belief other than a set of imaginations that have been carefully honed to pacify existence? There’s no substance to it at all.

Scientific beliefs are corroborated, falsified, tested and reviewed, then applied to produce a result or technology (we have satellites in orbit with these ideas) that actually produces something.

Religious beliefs are simply compared imaginations with other hopefuls for the mere sake of believing. And today, religious belief of any kind (even strictly opposing views) are respected for the simple fact they believe something, or anything at all. Certainly any belief is more worthy than unbelief—at least they have a chance, right?

Yet, belief is nothing more than a set of ideas that may sound really neat (or morbid) but is simply wishful thinking—assigning it some strange importance that will outwit nature does not make it real. But, we’re sticking to it against all reason, turning the mere idea into defensive pride, renaming it faith (which is the arrival at what?) all the while these fascinations do nothing to transcend humanity from this long monotheistic stall.

“Anosognosia is a lack of ability to perceive the realities of one’s own situation. It’s a person’s inability to accept that they have a condition that matches up with their symptoms“ (1) These religious beliefs occur despite significant lack of evidence or the predicted outcomes.

“Go to, thy faith hath dug you a hole”.

Note On My Old God

If the ultimate, monotheistic plural god of Abraham doesn’t exist, would that mean none of the others do either?

As a believer I was so used to discrediting the other gods for so long (way to easy) I never bothered to look into them. I suppose I don’t know enough about them to believe in them, but do I know enough about them to not? Can you not believe in something you’ve never invested?

For now I’ve just let it all go. No chasing belief or fine tuning incredible imaginations to disguise my final destination. It’s really out of my hands. The Christians already control the cosmos with their prayers anyway, so what am I going to do?

“Belief is meant as a temporary waypoint to prove a premise, not a destination in itself”

How did belief become a virtue (rhetorical question) anyway? It is a worthless position of pride faith clinging to someone else’s hopeful imaginations with an argument. It’s all quite ridiculous, really.

“We will never progress as a society until we overcome belief mode and transcend the neurological trappings of faith”.

Faith by Atheism

“Atheism in the informal sense is a profoundly religious attitude—an attitude in life of total trust in letting go. When we form images of god they are all really exhibitions of our lack of faith—something to hold on to, something to grasp.

And so there is the profound central mystery of the attitude of faith—to stop chasing it, to stop grabbing it. Because if that happens the most amazing things follow. All these ideas of the spiritual, the godly as this attitude of “must“—”And we have laid down the laws which we are all bound to follow“. This is not the only way of being religious and relating to the inefable mystery that underlies ourselves in the world—you!

If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go—Alan Watts.

Atheism is total trust that the universe is happening with or without your pathetic belief, and long before YHWY hit the scenes.

Modern faith is merely clinging to the hope in imag-ination—an idol of your minds eye, attempting to comprehend beyond comprehension, while simply picturing your flavor of god simultaneously makes you a sinner.

So, here we are—you are to blindly believe by your choice (a worthless epithet in disingenuity) but form no images of god, for in your grandest musings only offer pathetic, inadequate renderings offensive to the supreme offender.

“The Bible itself is now the ultimate graven image of our time, and all time” but as we see the believer cannot help but add to it. The idea of a god takes special, mental wrangling and wording to complete a sentence that stands without excuses to believer and non alike. Nothing written could even remotely approach it—and the image you’ve created holds no utility to humanism.

Artificial Selection—The Way of Religion

The difference between the theory of evolution and the theory of god, the formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence.

Like the artificial evolution induced in the Russian fox experiment (breeding for temperament only) created a completely different animal in just a few short years, breeding for belief through temperament (and because of belief) has had the same effect on humans.

Now a shadow of our former selves through unnatural selection, the general population has resolved to belief over substance, faith over fact, essentially giving-up on the quest for a firmer reality, acquiescing to the dogma at the threat of exclusion.

The natural man was no enemy to god—the natural man was god, but through domestication built on one trait, we have become subjects to ourselves. Genetically altered, weak and submissive, we now get what we were bred to be—prisoners with belief in a nothing…and smug about it.

Believe in Your Doubt

The founders knew the power of doubt and hedged the stupor of faith with some clever cautions. Now, doubt is considered a trial to mature you in the faith, “there will be doubters and temptations, but god will reward you for your faith”—Just believe, god is testing your devotion.

Using your good sense to forfeit your good sense makes no sense. It puts one in the position of “we believe” and everyone is smarter when they join a group, right? My son used to always say, “no one is as dumb as all of us“.

If you fear the unavoidable unknowns that bookend this existence, by all means join a group to influence you to prejudice. Now you are in a position to believe great and abominable things by the power of groupthink. Now, go ahead, condemn and judge at will, hope them wickeds to suffer and burn, for the power and backing of the group has now made you something you’re not.

The reality—doubt is a warning to your inner self that your being conned. It’s a natural feeling to protect ourselves, but has been carefully crafted into a weakness by religious men of words who have a dog in the fight. Doubt is a weakness? Only if you need to believe.

To those who want to protect their minds from assimilating imaginations, doubt is an essential strength. Never give up your power to speak out. Ignoring doubt produces exactly the conundrum that allows nonsense to flourish. Quelling your openness to question everything—by fear of rejection.

“Any group that will embrace you over belief, will abandon you over unbelief” Conditional friendships anyone?

What Denomination of Atheism are You?

How much do we need to know before we can safely say we don’t believe?

Having not much in the way of indoctrinations outside Christianity, my unbelief is limited to a specific scope of practice—a field test of the words and ideas that were forced on me without my consent since birth. Really, can we reject all the other gods we don’t yet know?

Since we don’t know much about eastern religion, nor the meanings of orthodoxy, or Hinduism, most of us here have an atheism to the Yahweh god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The other gods we hardly know, so considering blanket disdain or unbelief in something unknown is nearly impossible but yet, hardly worth the time to explore it out.

The key strong belief lies in pretending this life holds vast importance, that your worry and concern are somehow moral, noble and righteous. But this just isn’t true, and fearing to really live life because of the dogmas has crippled humanity into a fear of being afraid, instead of allowing life to play out the scenes. Fear as a normal part of this exploration, like the order of operations, first comes fear, then comes the faith (which isn’t faith at all, but worry)

We have been conditioned to believe here in the Christian god out of fear and faithless worry, but really it’s all the other gods we don’t know that we should be concerned, worried, and watching about—for we know this one isn’t real.

Aphorisms on Faith

Faith is an attachment to formative persuasions—an idea anchored by self doubt initiated by that same persuasion.

Faith is being directed into contemplating an idea, simply from hearing the questions.

Faith is pride in self deprecated belief absent of independent thought.

Faith is a solidified by the hormonal response, comforting human insecurity and the propensity to be easily deceived.

Faith is a comforting hope that elevates esteem without intellect.

With faith we build barriers between exaggerated reaction syndrome and acceptance. It allows us to blend rather than confronted with raised eyebrows—A state of beliefing though verbal and superficial physical obeisance. The idea of obedience supplants behavior.

Faith is merely stubborn pride repackaged as a virtue. Thought convictions played on insecurity without substance. Really nothing to fight over, but since beliefs are now the pinnacle of human intellect, challenging belief has become an affront to character.

Faith is a tightly held imagination your hope is true—then defending that right to hope with an argument.

Faith is what you resort to when you can’t reason your beliefs.

Faith is a state of mind that allows mediocrity to supplant achievement.

Faith is the result of fusing human limitations into cultural mediocrity. Since there is nothing a believer can do to un-fall this fallen world. Acquiescence defaults to hope.

Transcending belief mode and its limitations will be the key saving humanity. Faith allows the world to end on hope where action is needed.

By choosing a prearranged faith, dogma substitutes authenticity with platitudes.

Faith in your belief turns hope into intellectual and spiritual starvation.

Faith is the evidenced in human stagnation—clinging to the past and the failure to live in self confidence

Mule stables, Fort Spokane—1880

Second Coming—The Transfer of Power

“Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:
For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three—Luke 12:51-53

How will this same gospel unite us after Jesus returns in “power and great glory”? If his truth is eternal, isn’t what is true now be true then? Possibly Christianity has a higher hope that things will be better with a single theocratic ruler than I do.

The millennial reign of Jesus will be available only to those willing to continue to submit completely. There will be no dissenting the Lord in his glory. The entire millennial reign is an affront to free speech, free will, and our earnest attempts at a free republic (the best form of government)

There is a reason people fought to establish a republic, but how now do we transfer it to a kingship theocracy of totalitarian rule?

After every government possible is infiltrated by Jesus’ anointed leaders “building the kingdom” here on earth, how do we transfer that power to god? He’ll take it! Every knee shall bow and very tongue confess that Jesus is lord—or else.

We have never seen hell on earth like we do when theocracy will rule. It is written: “As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God—Romans 14:11

“And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father”—Rev 2:23. Welcome to the rebirth. Like father like son?

If any of it were true at all… but it is people believing this tripe that has humanity at odds with each other.

Promises Promises

His covenant was to be everlasting, and they should possess forever the country he should give them. Now it is plain these promises never were realized.

They have never been fulfilled concerning the great blessings with which they were to be favored. For although they won a few small victories over some poor nations whom they plundered, this did not prevent them from being conquered and reduced to servitude, their kingdom destroyed as well as their nation.

And now the remainder of this unfortunate nation is looked upon as the vilest and most contemptible of all the earth, having no country, no dominion, no superiority. Finally these promises have not been fulfilled in respect to this everlasting covenant which God want to have for filled to them because we do not see now nor have we ever seen any evidence this covenant has been fulfilled. On the contrary they have been for many centuries excluded from the possession of the small country they pretended God had promised that they should enjoy forever—Voltaire

Now it is propped up by the United States. Like all of Christianity is propped and joined with governments, for it cannot stand on its own merits. The one foreign domain ignorant enough to believe the imposters who feigned to be prophets and who, in order to more easily deceive the ignorant and simple minded, boasted of acting and speaking by the Spirit of God. The saddest part about believing in a god as the head of your nation—living conceited while vastly overestimating your greatness. Boasting the power of a god who requires the wealth and missile systems of another country to enforce its scripture.

The ritual heritage that we are so fond of it in detail descends from animal sacrifice, colored clothing, blood, livers, bird crops, and kidneys. Animal skins, dung, smoke, foreskins and certain measures of oil with wine—the whole being offered and infected by dirty ceremonies as filthy and contemptible as the most extravagant performances of magic.

The Art Of Theism

Theism abuses ideas to promote their own source of validation by degrading all of humanity—breaking them to the lowest level of creature vs lifting them up.

Theism is the ultimate display of pride in self doubt—only through faith can you be whole, which is pure rubbish.

Theism writes disingenuous attempts to promote the will of a deity they readily admit escapes comprehension.

Theism promotes faith so humans fail to act of their own accord—waiting for guidance when deep down they already know what to do, lacking confidence because of the same faith.

Theism persuades men to condemn other men for their genetics and lack of Jesus in their culture.

Theism demonstrates mans ability to dismiss pure reason to pacify insecurity.

Theism teaches faith in god (the ultimate idol) which is merely a substitute for our own achievement and effort—reality teaches us there’s nothing like finding contentment through doing something for yourself and achieving self worth through accomplishment.

Theism is the ability to nurture pretending, believing, and hope, into an honor, resorting to faith when you can’t reason your belief

Theism has constructed a god that requires us to wait for reward—convincing believers that true peace is after life and conjures one to waiting instead of making it so now.

Theism is to abuse faith—a temporary principle of discovery by making it the pinnacle of achievement.

Theism is the arrival at nothing; mere thought convictions without substance or positive results. How long does an idea deserve to meet its objectives?

Theism is the ability to dismiss hard evidence of historically poor outcomes by believing that it’s convictions are not the cause of the outcome (but everywhere it planted it’s flag, cruelty followed)

The strongest of faith cannot endure once we know truth, but is then often secured by pretending and group pressure. Faith however, cannot exist with the slightest amount of proof. It is imperative there is no proof. Proof would not destroy religion, but it would kill faith and it’s ill affect on the human race.

Theism is a way of challenging death…while still dying.

Theism is a way of assigning meaning to random chaos, blaming a devil for the ills in the world then punishing those that don’t believe that—for merely a different thought.

Theism attempts to use reason to explain belief by clinging to traditions molded before reading was common.

Theism embraces the thought that humans are incapable and justify misplaced devotion to imagination. Humans are actually pretty awesome. But by belief they can be persuaded to do the unthinkable.

Theism rewards mere thought conviction and words as something of substance and will punish those that don’t have them.

Theists practice the art of exaggerated importance. Honoring strong faith (which is simply stubborn pride) stemming from a challenge in reverse psychology. Who can claim belief most earnestly in the face of knowledge reaches the pinnacle of faith.

The Newness Wains—Defending the Faith

Happy with the surge of new found faith? Give it time. This is just the beginning…

Being carefully guided in belief, we learn what “we believe”, but the group effect has some curious side effects. In order to bend your bullets around corners it takes some clever self-interplay as well, guiding your mind carefully into a non-functioning model of thought conviction with no substance—peace through stagnation and empty promises.

The comfort zone of nonproductive faith includes:

• More Handwaving than you anticipated
• Answers without substance become natural
• Built-in redundancy
• Out-thinking your opponent without thinking of your opponent
• Increased desire for sin
• Misplaced gratitude

God is good. Sure, he steadies the hands of the surgeon, but did you know, before surgeons are qualified to operate, they must meet a set of challenging education requirements? These generally include four years of undergraduate study, four years of medical school leading to a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree, and three to eight years of surgical residency at a hospital.

Not to mention having the guts to do the dirty work—digging around in cadavers and engaging in mastery of human anatomy and physiology.

Don’t thank god, thank those who are willing to explore (in any field) People are pretty awesome and there’s no shame in accepting that. If we are going to make it on this rock, we could certainly use some help. But, you may have to set beliefs on the back-burner and engage as passionately in a skill as you do in mere belief. That same belief that has made a lot of claims, yet here we are, having gone nowhere for 2000 years and already hoping and praying it ends? That is the history of faith. Every generation thinks this is it! It isn’t even close.

I believe in the potential of humanity, but first we must discard the biggest problem that holds us in first gear.

The padlocks on this paper show how some things are just way too important to some people—beliefs are no different. There is a better way.

The Transmission of Faith—Now What?

Imagine a moment I’m projecting my consciousness on you—there, that was easy.

That is the beauty of religious belief. It takes no effort nor academic discipline, but is lauded as type of high achievement. Belief was never intended as an end-point, but a proving ground, a temporary waypoint to truth. We test our theories and improve them, retest and share them, accept criticism and hone our hypothesis into a working physical model that creates actual things—results.

Resting on belief we find there is nothing to do, no equations to solve, no advances in the general knowledge of humanity, so we take to the road and teach the technique on others—and believe harder, like concentrating on it could bend a spoon. Dreamy philosophies of heaven and celebrated archaic battles in hairsplitting, immoral grandeur.

It is not natural to believe in god. How many have found god having never been persuaded, presented, or indoctrinated by another mere mortal? The true wonder of nature hits us the first time our toes touch the grass as a child. It’s real and you know it! That wonderful mystery spawns curiosities and appreciation all on its own. Through beliefs we quickly quell the desire for discovery, resting on our smug fat butts with a specially tailored shortcut to never knowing anything—Faith

Like a kid that found his dads hatchet, what are we to do with all this free time? What else is there to do but injure yourself and everything around you? And thinking about thinking about belief. Whoa! That’s deep!

Real Faith—The Faith of an Atheist

It is not about the science. Atheism is the ultimate expression of faith—letting go of the idols of gods with complete confidence in the central mystery—we are the midst of it, swimming in it and completely surrounded. We are It. How else would you know but that it is so central as our being we cannot consciously recognize it.

“Atheism in the informal sense is a profoundly religious attitude. An attitude in life of total trust of letting go. When we form images of god they are all really exhibitions of our lack of faith—something to hold on to, something to grasp.

When we don’t grasp we have the attitude of faith. If you let go of all the idols of faith you will of course discover that what this unknown is precisely, the foundation of the universe, which is precisely you.

It is not the you you think you are (it is not your opinion of yourself) it is not your idea or image of yourself, it is not the chronic sense of muscular strain which we usually call “I” You can’t grasp it, of course not, why would you need to? Suppose you could, what would you do with it? You could never get at it!”.

And so there is the profound central mystery of the attitude of faith—to stop chasing it, to stop grabbing it. Because if that happens the most amazing things follow. All these ideas of the spiritual, the godly as this attitude of “must“—”And we have laid down the laws which we are all bound to follow“. This is not the only way of being religious and relating to the inefable mystery that underlies ourselves in the world—you.

“If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go“—Alan Watts

Physics and philosophy are converging into what is, while religion, the restrictive band (the choke point) is digging another ancient foothold to maintain control through fear and deprecation—

A-theism—Order of Operations Explained

Matt—Atheism can’t exist without theism. You can’t deny a God who doesn’t exist. Therefore, atheism is proof of God.

Me—Atheism is actually proof the writers were wrong. Man can be tempted more than he can bear. And BTW, atheism precedes theism so your argument is fallacious. I only learned I was a worthless sinner and needed god from missionaries telling me so. I was born atheist.

Mattie—A- is a prefix to theism, it modifies it to mean the opposite.
Therefore A-theism can’t exist without theism.
Learn how words work.

Me—The word theist may precede the word atheist, nothing more. Theists that criticize the limitations of speech lack common sense (faith again). You have no argument. I was born atheist as you were. You just take the bait—I don’t. Wordsmithing doesn’t change the order of operations.

Mattie—If you were born an atheist why does God bother you so much?

Me—There is no god to bother me. Evidence however, would actually kill faith. You still have faith, therefore you have no evidence. Truth 1:3

Matt—Dude, we just reconciled the Bible with ALL physical evidence and empirical observations. I hope the hole in the sand where you keep your head is comfortable.

Me—I’m quite comfortable watching you unwind.

Matt—That’s called whining.
Your desperation is palpable.

After losing on the word atheist he quickly came unwound to insults. His site is fringful wishes to prove the Bible through science. Might be interesting if the hate and ignorance wasn’t so “palpable”. Cheap entertainment if you have a moment.

Careful to engage, it gets ugly fast. Put colorstorm and branyan together in a bottle of steroids on LSD and voilet! But you can judge for yourself (unless you’ve already submitted your brain to god)

moon after sunset

Want to Believe

“Humanity desires belief and will sacrifice good sense to get one“—then pay dearly for the ability to hope and pass the litmus test—to have enough belief to be saved.

They pay with their wallets, of course, but what is the real price of fervent belief in ideas that fantasticize spiritual meaning?

Subterfuge—”deceit in order to achieve one’s goals“. Shortcuts to meaning are impossible to produce the desired results—Settling for meaning by way of fear is diminished capacity—through belief we can ignore our deficiencies for third party recompense.

Turn-key, prepackaged, big-box religion has an interesting, if not completely arrogant approach, using subterfuge to present group enlightenment and personal salvation while shortchanging the creature. Firstly, exacting guilt where there is none, chopping humanity down only to notch it back to an average, mediocre, lifetime dependency.

If I believe Jesus is savior and son of god, I can be saved. If I don’t believe this version from lack of evidence and consistency I will be damned to eternal torment—so basically handwaving contradictions and errant outcomes are tests of faith that must become a way of life to keep your senses. Who would present such a far-fetched and cruel story and believe god is good, merciful, kind, and love?

“The truth will set you free“, not belief, not faith. The key to discovering truth is unbelief, for by it we reject incongruity without adhering to systems that stifle our ability to see the world for what it is.

By submitting to belief our journey is carefully guided down the path of mediocrity. The current state of affairs is the objective reality of subjective faith.

Sunday Best

“the records show ordinary people being naively quite atheistic in their “interviews” with the Inquisitors of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Apparently they had been counseled by their lying eyes…

Steve Ruis has some excellent insight today on reason and religion. If you don’t already read Steve, see his fantastic analysis on acceptable forms of reasoning HERE.

Baby Turkeys hiding poorly yesterday.

Contradiction—Enduring Faith

In a nutshell, the less you believe in Christianity, the more likely you are able to understand it. The ability to handwave and justify contradictions is erased by unbelief. That is a big plus towards a firmer reality. We’re not talking one or two contradictions, but a massive patchwork—it’s thematic

In pharmacology there are statistically not eight prescription medicines you can take without drug interaction—basically at that point, taking medication to treat side effects of medication.

Christianity’s circuitous contradictions are so frequent, they now use contradictions to explain the contradictions.

Only through unbelief can we see that this is the great mystery of the kingdom—how does he get us to do that?

This is exactly what happens when you concoct a story without thinking it through. It may sound convincing at first, but as we peel back the layers they have to add another. Today we have no other institution on earth so grand where built-in redundancy is another million volumes of contradictory explanations—per year!

Diabla cooling off after a long run up the mountain.

Evolving From Belief Mode

So, if I am skeptical by nature and don’t believe, but agree to believe by choice, would god then judge me for being a liar? If one simply does not believe the story, but agrees for the sake of community, family, income, for the children, isn’t that dismissal of personal integrity a sin?

Can one truly decide to believe, or in my current case, I only now can decide to pretend to believe? Deciding to believe is a choice, which makes it pretending mixed with hope—that lacks integrity.

It seems as though we are destined to believe, as distasteful and destructive as it is to the current form of humanity. Even those that leave Christianity generally adapt another belief of some kind. Everyone wants a belief. To me, at this point that just seems weird (maybe I’m weird) but I believe nothing. There is no progress in a modern, overpopulated world for these uberdeveloped thought convictions, backed by stubborn, tribal pride, which is ultimately just strong belief in faith.

The antithesis of what the scripture supposedly intends, but draws out the man in a course few can correct.

If I had to choose at this point, some primal form of worship would be my choice.

The Splendor of Belief—

Faith leads to this. I cannot sum it up any better than to direct you to the secret comments between believers about faith—do not deny! HERE

The comments are particularly good. Gods chosen are judge and jury. Of course they have relinquished there own moral autonomy and know longer no better.

“Backyard in the lowering sun”

Believing in Faith vs Practicing Beliefs

Religious believers of every fashion you can imagine cover the globe in a philosophical, often self-satisfied smugness—that the believer actually knows something. I would prefer they start using the term, “embracing ideas”, since the stigma associated with the words “faith”, or “belief” connotes too much religious autocracy. Having a personal relationship with a supernatural god you can’t comprehend, see, touch, even imagine, also just sounds so…crazy. Ok? But I hear it’s worth it…only later.

Embracing a good idea, relieves one of the burden of delusional psychopathy, may actually calm personal nerves, reduce anxieties, defeat self depreciation, and promote good behavior. Regardless of this new trend (as of now) faith and belief are terms that should be absorbed back into the cosmos, stricken from the record.

That’s an idea I can embrace, espouse, grasp, and hold on to—without faith hijacking the conversation with a damaging, self-imported debasement that is no longer useful. Belief is not an honorable trait, nor is faith worthy of accolades. It’s simply a decision, a conviction of thought in one’s own weakness to believe in something that is not around to help.

Trust In You, Ye Prisoners of Doubt

The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves—Joseph Campbell

For many years I felt like I was just supposed to trust those that said they knew what they were talking about. I was a prisoner of doubt—accepting another’s belief over my own ability. What’s really crazy about that—it was never even my own belief, but the beliefs that others believe others believed. I trusted people to be truthful. That is a sin worthy of cursing.

 “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man—Jeremiah 17:5

From whom do we get the stories? Yep! God is a no show.

What’s even crazier about that is what we decided to believe was all written about a desert nomad thousands of years ago (a myth) It really is something to put so much credence in the very old tale, while we ignore our own present abilities to serve the genes of a goat herder.

I now have no religious beliefs and the vast majority of the people in the world don’t have their own either. I don’t believe in god, but they don’t believe their own story either—but that of another. Who but a few animists, spiritualists, and atheists actually listen to themselves and tune into the world around them right here, right now?

Hope puts believers at enmity with the inevitables of life and the placebo is hope that someone else will change it for them”.

The way to insure a life of faith is to sacrifice your integrity for hope. So, it boils down to faith without evidence is the most exciting story, then spending the rest of your life defending that hope with an argument.

Critiquing Faith—Understanding the Blowback

Three very important things to remember when scrutinizing faith.

First of all it confronts the validity of hope which triggers an adrenergic response. It can certainly be startling when faced with the fact no god is coming to the rescue. “Wait, I’m on my own here?” No worries mate, you’ve been living life on your own the whole time (with a little help from your friends) Nothing is going to change only you don’t have to wait around talking to yourself to see if a prayer was answered. You’ve done ok so far, but holding that much power can be frightening at first. But, you’ll get used to controlling you own path.

Second, criticizing a belief is a trigger warning to resist temptations to even consider alternatives—for god (friends and family) is measuring your devotion at that very moment. Considering better-than-belief alternatives you might fall into sin, or regress to your old self and return to your own vomit (Proverbs 26:11) All those things “god” did for you won’t come undone. Relax. No need for knee-jerking. Its called moving on—maturing through faith.

Thirdly, you directly insult imagination. Humans have terrific imaginations—religion is a great way to kill time when your brainpower exceeds opportunity, activity, or motivation. But don’t be fooled—just a nudge in the right direction and bang! You can express this runaway imagination through achievement.

Our imaginations make up a huge portion of who we are, or think we can become. A personal affront to imagination is a direct insult worthy of stoning and death. It even has a name—blasphemy.

Blasphemy—a: the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God 

b: the act of claiming the attributes of a deity for man to imagine that he was divine could only be viewed as blasphemy.

“Suggesting you have the ability to chart your own path puts those in power in an awkward position to justify their own arrogance”. This is a most heinous sin. It’s treason, really.

And fourth but not least, reducing self-deprecation as a worthless sinner isn’t putting you in dangerous territory, but it may release how good you can really be without having to put your own foot on your own neck in the name of belief.

A good thing to remember—arguing with faith is debating reason against physiology. Through repetition the neurons are hardwired and the inability to connect the dots and to embrace contradiction is now a physical phenomenon.

Maturing in Faith

America’s True-Christian submits to lasting faith, line upon crooked, twisted line. Precepts that turn, juke and spin until acclimation settles in to accepting his eastern religion merry go round as the one true faith. He is now a foreigner in his own mind estranged from reality, celebrating human sacrifice over the unblemished ram. It all makes perfect sense.

The trouble spots he noticed along the path burrow deep in the back of his mind, ignoring to recall. Like a smoldering trash fire he saw on the news years ago, occasional flames are fanned but retreat to smolder under the help of reason (ah, the explanations) the same reason surrendered at the door of faith.

Like eyes blindfolded at night—unable to see the light of day, he hopefully presses on to find the meaning of it all. At daybreak the blindfold tightens under a mask beguiling self. Light tries, creaks in, but now it is only a disciplined annoyance distracting briefly from the human needs to be herd—and find meaning he never knew he lost until it was so astutely pointed out.

Has he ever the courage to risk all his effort and walk away? Rarely, although he wants to. But he has found solace pretending to believe. Pretending to get it. Pretending this faith matters—then do and behave however he wants? That is the true Christian—following the example of the Bible god.

The reality is there are no true believers. Each has his own market cornered on his own brand of delusion. Reasoning their own judgement away one must construct just the right wording to find any possible way it could make perfect sense. Acquiescence

Atheism is the manifestation of integrity. Or should I say, accepting your atheism is the foundation integrity. Saying out loud what everyone already knows.

Having enough courage to say what is rightfully so, we have now matured in the faith. The red words of the Bible have trained us up to be men of honor in all areas but one. And we are now supposed to dishonor truth by pretending. I don’t believe there is a god, but we can do it for the kids.

Atheism, Humanism, Sciencism—Just Another Religion?

As catastrophic events unfold millions of prayers dissipate into the stratosphere—and nothing. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It is not proof of absence, but in the spirit [sic] of consistency one would automatically conclude there is no God, just as you would conclude after seeking flaming elephorned jackals for 5000 years in Kentucky—or South Africa. Never seeing a non duplicatable unseen claim is plenty of evidence of non existence—unless of course there is an explainer close by.

If my atheism is a belief as I’ve been accused, is science too a belief system? I would effectively have two, no three belief systems. My atheism is not based on science, nor is my humanism based on atheism or science.

If religiosos are insistent that I believe (science you know, requires more faith than worshipping deities) then is ethics too, a belief system—and reason? Oh for gods sake!™️ I have five belief systems!

We have evidence of many things that are not true—

Consider a game of chance—a coin flip. If I flip a coin five times and get heads each time, is that proof the coin is two-headed? Of course not, but if I get heads 500 times I could safely conclude I have a two headed coin, no matter what another may say. Based on experience, 500 heads in a row would be evidence the coin has no tail

If I pray one time and get no answer, is that proof there are no gods answering prayers? Of course not, but if I pray 500 times a year for 40 years? That’s pretty good evidence there are no answers to prayers. How about the entire planet? Gods are either avoiding contact, or just not there. I’ll go with what actual experience tells me.

After 2000 years it is clear—and a million Olly Olly Oxen Frees gives me a million to none odds he’ll stay in hiding—or perhaps gods are myths. Or perhaps the catastrophe has a hidden meaning.

A Good Verse

With the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in God’s likeness“. James 3:9

This could be a scripture about jealousy, but it’s not favored that way among believers. If you want to know the best part about being a god, look to those who the writers curse. The nature of those most like god—it is those that make their own ideas and choose for themselves how they will live, then live well beyond the framing limits of religious obedience.

We are despised for charting our own path. We are despised for plucking off the fruit of knowledge. Dogmas are meant to service those that rely on others for guidance and inspiration. This is quite offensive to James who believed everyone should have to have their brain sucked out through intangible thought convictions—through faith and submission.

Faith or Pride—Why Not Both?

—Faith is actually an enhanced form of pride, then strengthened by forced humility we subjugate ourselves with untold endurance.

The strongest of faith cannot endure in us once we know truth. Faith however, cannot exist with the slightest amount of proof. It is imperative there is no proof. Here’s how it works.

The mere micrograms of norepinephrine released into the brain when confronted about belief gives mankind a stubborn physiological response—one that overreacts on belief, not fact, over trust, not inquiry. If you’ve ever dealt with indigenous tribalism, you understand this historical point—to challenge their belief is an affront to them as a person.

The truth is, faith cannot be dismantled because there is no evidence. It seems odd, but finding a truth, an artifact, a corroboration of the life of Jesus, Moses, or Abraham would actually begin to break the spell of faith, not the other way around.

It was necessary to present a complete and total whitewash in characters, place-names, events—all of it, in order to manipulate mankind into the total type of faith that is a byproduct of faulty human physiology. Presenting any religious fact would diminish the strength of complete and total obeisance—held by pride but repackaged into a virtue—faith.

Another grand contradiction of the Bible is to beware us of pride, then manipulate our psyche into displaying the most arrogant, defensive pride of all—faith. Think about that.

A great archeological find by near-eastern researchers would be the beginning of the end for faith. They won’t find it, and the founders knew it. It’s a gem of a trick on the crazy neurology and hormones of the human mind—Ontology solved. This is what the founders intended.

Expecting Miracles—Living With Disappointments

Tears and years of toil and prayer ended today as no help arrived. The lifeless and sunburned body of a man—who had prayed often and watched the horizon daily for a rescue, lay in the sand.

The others had left a year ago. They built a wicky-boat and sailed away, now living in Patagonia with jobs and nightlife. Waiting for rescue is a chancy business. While now the world waits in overuse for the second coming to renew the earth, wipe out unbelievers and sinful saints, the earth spins in turmoil. We can do something about it. There is no reason to wait but greed and insecurity. No one is coming to the rescue—it is up to us…This entire exercise of faith and waiting has issued license to havoc our natural resources and consume the very thing that gives us life. The Ouroboros will be our legacy. Not as a symbol of infinity, but of self destruction.

Ruminating on Belief—

Belief holds only a temporary benefit until a premise has been proven, not a goal in itself—when do we move on?

Understanding your human nature is an important key to resisting the patterns that sustain anchoring bias—that deep tendency to adhere to the first information acquired on any given subject. Ruminating that first morsel—a lifetime of informational cud chewing. How hard is it to change what you’ve been taught in ignorance of the subject, then believed? It takes a miracle, but let’s face it, in those first moments of exposure we’re all ignorant—and gullible to the authority, whether it be parents, professors, or pastors.

Then comes the backfire effect, a near universal, automatic reaction to repudiating evidence of your mere faith, which strengthens your beliefs in spite of better solutions—digging in, protecting those little nuggets wrapped up in your skull when new ideas or evidence is counter to what you believe. Norepinephrine is released in the brain when facts are presented counter to what we believe, creating a fight or flight (or stubbornness) to adopt new information. Religions grow from this stubbornness of human hormones and hardwiring.

Take Darwin for example; He himself was attuned to this phenomenon and lamented his discovery, struggling to procede openly with the Origin of Species because of the effect it would have on everything and everyone he knew—very aware that the reception his evidence would bring a fight.

No matter the spiritual belief, people take great comfort in what they already understand—even if it is a garbled mess to everyone else. Replaying their same old themes—reruns that are familiar and predictable. In today’s world we have to adapt quickly to keep up with technology, processes, and the devices. But belief is a special carrot, hampering progress with archaic, inerrant faith—the comfort zone, the one tool of the devil that keeps you enslaved to your biggest weakness—that overburdened ability to believe what you are initially told, even when it’s obvious it isn’t true.

Just believe. Convincing your mental self by answering your own prayers (you know that talking to yourself thing where you reason away your own mind) and making excuses for the writers inadequacies and failed promises.

Give up and let god? That is the literal example of human damnation—Abrahamic religions ability to stop the flow of actual growth and progress through mandated belief (then we defend it out of hormonal response).

Our perceptions are much more faulty than accurate. It’s no wonder the majority of the world believes something that can’t be seen, measured, or heard—craving that super hero to comfort their struggles—simply because they were told one exists and we are obligated to say yes to a fault.

Faith is pretending not to trust your poor judgement—which is using your own poor judgement to allow someone else to chose your path for you. Understanding your physiology is the key to moving on.

Faith—Allowing Chance to Rule Over You

Procrastination pays off when it comes to finding a church. Finally the years roll by and life is good. Those in the churches find it hard to believe happiness could come so fluidly without faith—but it does.

Belief in your own abilities can produce astounding results, while faith in deities—the perpetual waiting game, the continued respite from reality in hopes for enlightenment and good fortune ends right where you started—imagining.

Ode to another—

Faithfully following one

Fruitless endeavor—

How long shall we wait to to find the desired results before just moving on? Even Dr Seuss new better.

“You’ll get so confused that you’ll start in to race, down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace, and bring on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed I fear to a most useless place—the waiting place”—Oh the places you’ll go—

You’d think after thousands years that common sense would say enough—but the search goes on…the wait continues. There’s nothing to find.

Each of us, whether religious or not, creates outer own meaningful life—or not. If your happiness revolves around a belief that had millennia’s to iron some answers but has only created more questions—have at it.

Wait around another 5000 years if you like, but I think it’s time for a change. “How long do we give religion to fulfill its premises? Shall we wait, allowing chance to rule over us, or take control into our own capable hands?

Commanding the Elements—Thy Will Be Done

What manner of man is this that even the wind and the seas obey him? Matthew 8:27

A lucky one

Commanding tornados in the name of Jesus gets attention year after year. But, is commanding the weather a miracle, or just timing—and luck? (bad luck for the recipients of such commands).

Anyone that watches the weather can see two things; there’s a calm before the storm then, just when things are plum mad-dog mean as they can get—it quits. While truthfully there is a third option as well. We can all attest that no one recorded the miracle that day, nor were any of the writers present. It’s a story.

Things aren’t always what they seem, even after they seem like it.

Storms come and go, rivers crest, then fall—for all shit rolls downhill right until the miraculous moment it hits the bottom. All bleeding eventually stops and with enough people guessing, commanding in Jesus name someone is bound to be right.

Take two.

A month ago Ark was chastised and Jesus name was invoked—proving this miraculous promise. In his name ya know, believers can cast out devils. Here’s an excerpt—

I am speaking not to you but the spirit of the anti-Christ living inside of you and I command it to leave in the name of the resurrected Jesus Christ…But its all up to you to accept.

So, which is it, Jesus name or freewill? The fact is no signs follow them that believe. No devils are cast out, no seas are calmed by the faithful—hence all the shipwrecks in the history of sailing. Every single one had the prayers of the faithful muffled out by the sound of drowning. It either works or it doesn’t. Ark would be a Bible totin’ believer now, if it were true.

How egotistical for one to believe that god will alter the laws of nature and physics to satisfy self preservation. No life is more important than another, except the one living it, of course.

Raising the dead and casting our demons is relegated now to science and pharmacology. Signs truly follow them that study medicine, physiology, and resuscitation techniques. There are no true believers© on planet earth. Either the preterist are right, or no signs follow them that believe—ever.

An Enemy to God—The Natural Man

Being judged and sentenced by believers of god for a passive decision—a process of random inputs, neurons, billions of synapses interacting, perceptions weighed, likes and dislikes and cultural influence considered, simply for not believing a story—merely thoughts.

After having to process this information against my own choice, the ticket has popped out unbelief. What can I do to change that? What should be done to appease the masses…conform to become a natural man—gullible, trusting, yielding, herd instinctive, and fearful since birth? The desire to belong clouds judgement while the powerfully placed men of words and their yes-men apply pressure to consider the supernatural—by coercion.

A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised—1 Corinthians 2:14-15

Au contraire! A neat trick of religion and the biblicants is defining terms to suit their purpose. The natural man is actually the believing man as evidenced in the obvious. Everyone wants a belief. Since birth we are lied to, fearized, pressured, goaded—and though living in a society of liars we believe nearly everything that we are persuaded to believe. That, is the natural man. Either the believer is the enemy of god as the Bible says, or the Bible has decriminalized our natural tendencies and labeled the unnatural, independent-minded as the enemy. I am not the natural man. Having eyes that have opened through a struggle of librarial pursuit and observation, followed by the unpleasant task of unbelief, integrity will not undo this fact.

The strongest faith can’t protect us once we know the truth. Protection comes through conformity and abandoning honest virtue—integrity comes at a price. We now sit on the fringes of society writing anonymous blogs. Natural man? I’ll leave that to the churches where it’s modern version originated.

Mere unBelief—The Most Heinous Sin

Simply believe the abstruse and become a trusted member of society. The fact that one does not believe “the story” turns them an immoral criminal with shifting values, no? Worse—simple unbelief is the grossest of moral crimes and self decay.

Meanwhile, belief in something not seen—ever, in prayers answered—never, and confessing allegiance to a cause that has failed its objectives—forever, is the highly honored tradition. Am I missing something here?

Yesterday I realized how wrong I must be when Ryan (Dolphinwrites) stated “to prove a point is not as important as really seeking” This is like warming yourself by thinking about a fire, sunning your mental self from the dungeon of faith by an imagined beach, where thoughts are only valued by belief in ideas that have never grown the body of Christ to fruition—ever!

Each dream of fulfillment dying at the last breath of life never to be realized—consummation zero, with bliss the dying wish of every faithful—but to seek is the important part—and it must be a search within the defined parameters of religion to be of value. How has this become the gold standard of honor? Oh how the easy and absurd has become the respectable, the permissible, where foolish is the pinnacle of promise.

Pick any religious system of any kind—and it is belief that is respected and protected, while evidence be dammed and agendized—with belief nigh unto death erasing the checkered past and offers love and acceptance by the believers themselves, while mere unbelief of the decent is a ripening for hell.

Delusional Grandeur

Automakers following age old religious models are enhancing the sounds of the engines with the loud performance of speaker noise. VW, BMW, Ford, GM, and others have loudspeakers that roar, making the cars sound more powerful than they really are. The best of these is the Corvette muffler bypass system—that opens a gate when the throttle is mashed, making it sound more ferocious than a Ferrari V8.

Enter religion—

All bark and no bite is the way of the WORD as generations idle-by in first gear, always looking for more substance that never materializes. The true believer has been left to the wind with a low horsepower belief that cranks out high volumes of excuses and low performance—a gas-guzzler lemon stuck on the road of life, long before the first automobile rolled out of the factory. Are we there yet? Appearance is everything—masters of underperformance and smooth sales talk…what should be their finest hour has become an expected disappointment. The Corvair is Christianity—as Ralph Nader said, “Unsafe at any speed”.

The Modern Lucy—Ancient Survival Manipulated

Peering carefully, cautiously behind every corner…slowly, quietly, intently approaching every closet, while maginations hide under every bed—every time, chills of air send pilos erect, pupils dilate, blood pressures rise. Skin sensitivity doubles…with caution…ready to flee, or to fight, only to hide in worry another night. After arranging the room carefully—so no objects come alive in their darkened states, can a moment of peace descend dreary into sleep.

Why is this acute imagery laying in wait, alive beround every corner? Where did all this ritual come from? Survival. Who is it that survived the ages to become us? Where did we arrive to this overdeveloped sense, particularly at night?

It is this inherent caution, this fear, that is easily manipulated by religion. Playing on millions of years of survival instinct, the preacher paints a picture of a loving father figure to protect you from evil. If you can only imagine…just a bit more

Since the industrial revolution and the formation of modern survival, we have leaped beyond our multi-generational evolution. Changes that took 100’s of thousands of years are now shoehorned into a century. The preachers gold is our lumbering evolution. Fear is still a best seller…

Knots and Logs—Ancient Wisdom vs Faith

By careful observation, recording and tracking different data, celestial movements and time—by reckoning and counting knots on a rope, we can now see what was once a painstakingly risky process is now common knowledge and routine—by science.

And what was was true by faith is no longer true in reality. While Dead Reckoning is subject to cumulative errors (the farther you’re off, the faster you get farther off) we are now at the point of religious reckoning to an aimless wander on the high seas.

And by the same careful observations, we can see quite plainly that the promises of religion have no observable results, but still measured by long spells of hope. Religions multi-thousand year attempt at dead reckoning has taken the human mindset in an unending search for dry land, filled with empty promises and unsigned prayer slips.

Literally dropping a log in the water, measuring the horizon, and counting the knots allowed men to circumnavigate the globe and home again. With religion…we’re still waiting….

“Greater signs than these will follow them that believe“. Evidences please…even one? Dead reckoning for Jesus has formed an ocean of ambiguous text and excuses. For what never was, never will be. What is and what should never be —Robert Plant (1969)

How We Evolved to Belief—

Hard to dispute that belief is a common thread of war, contention, oppression, division, and hate, but I’d have to take two minutes to prove it. Seein’s I only get a minute here, godspeed is of the essence. To scrutinize and thoroughly plow-over any belief based faith is a noble and quite moral thing to do—and easy…

There are those that claim to have found god in their dreams, visions, NDEs, traumas, addictions, and so forth. He’s also been found in G-force testing, neurological studies, chemical enhancements, CO poisoning, anesthesia, seizures, end-zones, and outright lies. This spectral evidence (except for the lying, of course) is the root of all faith, and beliefs based on such evidence are totally unreliable and 100% subjective. To believe them has caused pain and suffering and outright murderous genicide throughout religions storied past. Putting all religion into past-tense would actually be wise—based on its performance…its own demonstrable evidence.

Humanity’s beauty is our obligatory nature to our fellows in-kind, basically feeling compelled to believe when presented nearly anything—to be compliant, agreeable, simply because we are asked to merely believe and trust. Belief is about the stupidest trait mankind has somehow maximally developed in a society of liars.

To believe based on another’s belief statement, who also heard it from another, who never witnessed anything— is not only foolish, but irresponsible.

Where in our evolution and why, did we become so believing, so trusting, yet raised in a predominantly dishonest society of liars? Raised in deception like it’s a running joke of some kind, how this serves our survival—I just don’t know.

In a nutshell—“if the existence of God is up for debate, he doesn’t exist. Belief/faith in something is not necessary if that something actually exists”—Ben

Feeding Turkeys—A Model in Proselytizing

“Long awaited news presses against the nervous silence of worry—to know is better than to guess, to believe is more folly than friend, for the tidings of faith piques naivetés vice—belief has no boundary nor moral”

Winters are pretty hard for the wildlife here on the mountain, so we feed the turkeys and the deer—just enough to get them by. On occasion a lone turkey comes looking for whatever they can find, but when I throw out some bread, they immediately calls all their buddies—sounding their turkey food bell and in comes the rafter. They then spend their time fighting over the purported good news…”the wintery wheat and rye appears like manna on the crusted snow” I guess they just can’t help themselves. It’s natural. The biggest difference I see between turkeys and Christianity—the bread turkeys fight over actually has a health benefit—not the poisoning, cankerous imaginary bread infecting the planet. The ‘bread of life’ is to embrace willful ignorance. Whole wheat is much less circuitous and boring.

How Belief Underperforms

I am curious to know how the universe happened, I’m just not convinced—in any way it was a who that made it happen—therefore there is no why it all happened. Once you realize there is no god, the simplicity of life brings peace—and how it all happened loses its urgency. Although I am quite curious and will someday have more answers, I’ll wait rather than believe in a god to simply satisfy an impatience to want answers with no effort, then act like I found something special by being controlled by a plug-n-play corporate religion. “I believe” is a foolish notion lacking quality of character and discipline. How does this happen?

Sales 101 plays on the trusting, gullible mind of the human. Controlling the conversation is as easy as asking a question, then filling the psyche with so many bullshit points that the ill-prepared are not prepared to answer. Ray Comfort uses this technique on natural atheists in his exposé videos. How come the banana man never asks one of us?

Dismantling of Faith

If you do not consider god first in all things, there is no room for god in any thing. If one chooses to give faith the benefit of the doubt, there is no room for reason. Whittled away from what once was, faith has suffered a methodical deconstruct of magnanimous proportions. Philosophies expand, explanations more grand, but supernatural positioning is dwindling to irrelevance. All one has to do is consider—

There are very few second chances in religion—None! If facts and scientific reason are considered and tested firstly, no superstition will ever supplant it. Psychology, Anthropology, Philology, Archeology, Astronomy, Biology, and Neurology, have quite nicely explained and proven—contradicting gods word at in-depth, unprecedented levels as never before. Even neurological experiments can re-create the spiritual experience—without the supernatural.

There is but one animal left to prove. Science has conquered belief every step of the way. Creation will be no different. While religion makes its scientific claim without explanation, it too will fall as the final hope for god. Not with why, but with how. I have faith we’ll get there, but many are hoping we won’t. Maybe they should pray about that too…The cosmological first-cause will be their last call.

What will they do when soon, enough is known to discredit this one last gasp of man’s greatest contrivance? Weeping and wailing tantrums against reality? We are on our own—let’s start acting like it. Physics, anyone?

Ten Reasons To Question Belief—In Anything

A lot has been said here over the past year. 352 posts and over 13,000 comments (thank you) since this all started. I have learned a lot from all of you ‘common atheists’, and that was my goal; To find the truth, not be told what to believe. To share with you all what I’ve learned, not what I’ve been schooled by professionals with a stake in it. With deeper understanding comes change, and with that change I’ve learned that exposing the blatant inadequacy of religion and the faith/belief numbing that has enveloped the human family is built on ten psycho-neuro premises. There are more, but these will do to persuade any reasonable person of the gullibility and delicate nature of human neurology and perceptions of truth.

We have traveled but a short distance in a great journey. We have honed our skills and perfected reason beyond the walls of religion. We have hammered on the fallacy of faith, fallibility of scripture, where it comes from, how it starts—the tricks of the preachers trade—while the duped are now running the con, and against all reason by way of contradiction, it’s a societal expectation…to believe. Why? What is the pressure inside most everybody to rush to believe—anything!

But, it is with little understanding of their own condition that they perpetuate the hoax on the unsuspecting gullibles, newborns, children, adults taking sides, and those human-herd tendencies that condition us to follow. To fit-in to a group based on belief that will turn on us over mere unbelief. It’s borderline c.r.a.z.y (sometimes you just gotta spell it out)

We don’t believe because we want to. We just do—everything! Always just believing what we are told (look at the success of fake news) Humans aren’t trustworthy with their own minds! Here they are in no particular order—for everyone, not just the other guy!

1. Cognitive Dissonance

2. Illusory Truth Syndrome

3. Confirmation Bias

4. Pluralistic Ignorance

5. Logical Fallacies

6. Neurotheology

7. Contradictions

8. Fear Appeal

9. Dunning-Kruger

10. Reason.

Please be aware of your own human condition, including the foibles and quirks of perception and neurology—before believing anything! (including shadow people). We can break the faith trap through awareness of humanism.

Measuring Prayer—A Model in Physics

In physics observable is defined as something that can be measured. The basic realities in life also can be measured. Outcomes can be predicted based on experience, consensus, repeatability, and yes, our eyes (usually). Only what a person can observe, measure, and demonstrate can be deemed as truth.

We all know the commutative law—take two numbers x and y. Multiply them and you can see that xy = yx. Always, no exception. But not so fast in quantum mechanics. If A and B are two matrices, then AB is not always equal to BA. Thus you cannot simultaneously determine the position and momentum of a particle. Both are incompatible (strange, but that’s how it is) and harnessing this discrepancy is leading to quantum computers, where you can watch it work even though it’s hard to understand how or why (even for physicists).

This is where religion steps in. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is foundational to matrix mechanics and where religion gets its primordial root in the prehistoric, basic operations of the quantum world. A sort of…subtle inheritance from our humble, elemental beginnings. Immeasurable, unverifiable, always changing positions of electrons doctrine, faith, and prayer. But now, not by defining particle behavior, but by splitting hairs.

Outcomes of prayer and faith cannot be predicted based on faith, experience, consensus, or dependability. Therefor, the attempts at faith and prayer is not truth. But, based on the known laws of quantum mechanics we can make a guess to where all those unanswered prayers wound up…waiting, somewhere between time, space, and subjectivity. Quantumly entangled with the prayers sender, but the missing, immeasurable electron (god) needed to complete the circuit has been uninterested, missing, hidden…forever.

Fundamental to understanding unanswered prayer, HERE is a fine new blog I stumbled across that illustrates the point, only better—Say hello to WOG

Polemic Arrival

As a relativity new anti-godder, turning fifty years of faith into something worthwhile has been revelationary. After escaping the indoctrinations of my youth, dismissing the false integrity of faith (the ability to compartmentalize fallacy and contradiction) produced a truth—the key to understanding the mysteries is unbelief. The ultimate of which is the ability to accept a god in yonder heavens sitting on a throne, even in a supervisory role of the universe.

Compromise has become difficult in this arena. The compromise I’m able to make is between ideologies that do not involve belief—in anything. How can one such as me, with zero belief in any form of god, come to agreement on particulars of supernatural belief when all can and has been explained quite nicely by reason, logic, or one of the sciences? I cannot.

I can’t believe in Jesus just a little bit, nor Allah or one of the Hindu gods. This is an all or nothing game where accusations unfold about my anger towards god, or having sin in my life, or I just don’t understand the scripture. I do understand it quite well. Five years ago the apologists would be backslapping with my level of understanding—now, I was never a true Christian.

So now I’m a polemic. I’m not angry at the religious, because I know the trick and the psychological hold belief and faith (which are required before knowledge) but I am keenly aware of the foibles of placing and defending a value on mere belief. Belief is by its very nature supposed to be a transitional state that is supplanted by reality, not an end-game achievement. Guaranteeing the ultimate reward of eternal life by believing has shown people will believe anything attached to a prize after death. The list of incredibly duped cults is proof we are easily fooled. I believe passionately in nothing. Where is the compromise going to take place debating ambidextrous doctrines of imagination?

Photo by Arkenaten 2018

Inside the Box—Cognitive Dissonance of Faith

In 1942, Albert Einstein just gave an exam to his senior class of physics students. His assistant asked him, “isn’t that exactly the same exam you gave to exactly the same class one year ago?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Einstein, “it’s exactly the same.”

“But Dr Einstein, how could you possibly do that?”, the assistant said.

“Well,” said Einstein, “the answers have changed.”

What each of us knows today will be replaced with a more accurate truth in the future. These incremental steps toward a firmer reality are often called “science changing its mind”. It is true, but it is also called improvement towards a more correct answer.

Now in business, according to the data, approximately 3% of people are inclined to even do different things outside the box when what they’ve been doing fails them. The remaining 97% continues to smash into the wall, trying to get different results by doing more or less of the same thing. Using the same answers in a recycled failure.

—Enter religion

Rewording, revisiting, attempting to replace the failed with an even older version of what has failed complete civilizations is the Christian way. Ontology was a guess, and it’s reworks and investigations are guesses as to what the guesses meant. And now as it turns out, in the years immediately after the CE began, there was no beginning truth. Only a con man named Paul who introduced his own gospel based on a character that is fictional. Which, btw, is a masterful stroke on basic human psychology. Less fact equals more faith, and zero fact equals great faith—the pride associated with mere belief is a cognitive dissonance dream come true. Belief is an untouchable sacredity for the common people when belief is all the knowledge they can muster, and will then defend a falsehood to the death over pride.

Less Belief Please—Save the Planet

“I don’t believe global warming is manmade”

“I believe the earth can take care of more than we can do to it”

“I believe when things get really bad, Jesus will return and rule in righteousness”

The latest argument I’ve seen is “volcanoes emit 100 times the amount of CO2 that humans can create” True? However, earths atmosphere is very thin. The earth is a stabilized environment based on millions of years of nature. We, and all other plant and animal life are adapted and evolved to this amount of natural pollutant in our atmosphere. Adding 1% can create catastrophic change neither us nor the planet can tolerate. Here’s a smaller sampling to illustrate.

Most organisms are very sensitive to seemingly small changes in pH. For example, in humans, arterial blood pH normally falls within the range 7.35–7.45. A drop of 0.1 pH units in human blood pH can result in rather profound health consequences, including seizures, heart arrhythmia, or even coma in a process called acidosis. The body functions in many ways to maintain homeostasis (equilibrium). On an even easier scale, a 1% rise in body temperature kills bacteria and viruses. Not too hard to think through a thousand repercussions to seemingly insignificant changes.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the global average pH of the surface ocean has decreased by 0.11, which corresponds to approximately a 30% increase in the hydrogen ion concentration (pH is logarithmic).

The life we take for granted is a very delicate balance evolved over millions of years. I believe that belief in errant beliefs is a faith based problem in the US. You don’t have the faithful or economic right to pollute the air I breath. Not even a little.

Right now we pump 2.4million pounds of CO2 per second into our atmosphere. That 38.2billion tons per year. No problem? I believe that is too much based on the data and my extensive training in physiology. And physiology is only one discipline to apply.

Just a small sampling of world cities. None of which is a manmade problem.

The Gullible Human

“It’s not that superstition and New Age so-called “beliefs” and fundamentalist zealotry are something new. They’ve been with us for as long as we’ve been human. But we [now] live in an age based on science and technology, with formidable technological powers”.

“We need a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility”.

“If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan political or religious who comes ambling along—Carl Sagan “A Way of Thinking”

Grasping at Straws—A Lecture on Faith

All our efforts at a spiritual life are prompted by self-interest—Alan Watts

Yet again, the promise of Christianity to make one a better person through faith, to dispose self interest for the greater good of mankind, to nobly tame the natural man through the submission of will actually intensifies self interest. The intent does not produce the desired outcome—again. Christians are Christians at the promise of reward and the escape of death. Fear is the underlying motivation of all perceived good in the name of religion. God (the writers) would have you believe you are doing it to please God, but the farther one goes into fundamental belief the more arrogant and self serving that interest becomes.

“Psychotherapy and liberation are completed in the moment when shame and guilt collapse, when the organism is no longer compelled to defend itself for being an organism, and when the individual is ready to own his unconscious behavior”—Alan Watts Psychotherapy East & West (1961)

Be-lief comes from the Anglo-Saxon root lief, which means to “wish.” Belief is the fervent hope that certain things are true. A wish

Faith is contrary to evolutionary laws of altruism and self sacrifice for the good of others. Promoting the general welfare through be-lief has put obedience to pious men of words above natural good sense and love—Talk about living a conflicted life. The harder one tries the farther they get from the destination. Like the expanding universe, the more we measure our lives through faith, the farther away they delve into confusion and self interest—the self perpetuating life of grasping at straws.

Believing We Don’t Believe

Isn’t it strange that testimony is to be taken at faith value, while lack of faith requires an explanation?

I do not believe there are any god(s) or a God or GOD (somehow the spelling matters) in any dimension in or outside time and space. Yonder heavens? Nope. The evidence is not compelling, the story too bizarre, nonsensical, and violent. And the promises…no signs follow anyone that believes.

I would offer this though, “if” there was a god, if this were a test, the ultimate test to prove your worthiness is this; do you have the integrity to not believe against overwhelming majority, in spite of being naturally superstitious, human herd instinct, and massive indoctrination to follow the crowd—to call out the immoral morality of the Bible for what it is, and to separate yourself from a doctrine that espoused suffering of any kind?

Do you have the decency to call the genocides of god or his people what they are without excuse, despite repercussions of mistrust, labels, constant pressures and fears? Simply the word atheist conjures a myriad of falsehoods aimed relentlessly at the person who simply won’t align himself nor suck up to a god/belief system that is the lifeblood of contradiction and conjecture, division and hate.

“Straight is the gate and narrow is the path, and few there be that find it”. Are we the few? This is the test. This is the sacrifice. Many of us have lost all our friends and family by distrusting a system that calls god good, while all along we see the the exact opposite and refuse to adopt the mantra and blatant contradictions.

They Should Be Thanking Me

Wally Fry made a comment on Mel’s site between him, Mel, and IB (the dream team) that it was nice not to have haters on the blog today. That he actually prayed for it. My comment kinda ruined the mood—”Prayer unanswered…again for the trillionth time“. The efficacy of prayer was proven once again—ineffective.

Hey, without us they would not get to increase in faith by overlooking fact. The plan of salvation would be thwarted, and the churches would collapse due to disobedience. No opposition, no faith, disobedience, wrath of god comes in a kills us off. I’m saving humanity!HERES a link if you want to take a stab at it…or not. Wally is pretty far gone mad.

My apologies to Doug for breaking the code of silence, but this was just too much temptation for a mere mortal such as me.

Making Neural Con ections

Missing part of the story is what we do as humans. No worries, we can fill in the __________ fairly easily with our imaginations. Even with ideas a bit more complex, a normal person will assume conclusions. In writing, drawing conclusions for your audience is un-engaging. For maximum _________, its best to leave some gaps in the story, even implied gaps.

Leaving blank spaces that have multiple possibilities is even more effective, stimulating the most possible conjecture. Intensional gapping works best with religious faith. Its ability to generate the highest levels of presupposition is unmatched by any other topic. Whenever an author can get the audience to fill in the blanks for him, the missing information can stir a life of circuitous inquiry—prime spawning ground for deeper religious conviction and faith. The more holes the better. Even more effective is multiple versions with varying gaps (the gospels) where differing audiences can fill the holes masterfully as inspiration the imagination allows.

While there are many holes, some have been philosophically filled with more ambiguity. The ecumenical councils are heralded as founding precepts of faith, while all along the first meeting took place to ultimately define the nature of god. Why? They didn’t know. Adding a word at will is also a neat trick. Take the word Filioque,(1) for example. Initially rejected after the first ecumenical council, then 700 years later the Catholic Church adopted it as truth. The council at nicea was also set nearly 400 years after the supposed Christ. Think about that! Can you tell me something accurate about a little known family member from the 1600’s, what he specifically said, his deeds, headcounts at sermons, and his travels? No! So you make it up and call it god. And to really make it convincing, the record must be gathered from sources that never personally knew the individual. Masterful!

(1) Filioque is a term that creatively determined that the Holy Spirit not only came from the father, but also the son. It was a neat add-on that immediately divided the western churches and eastern churches. It was a masterful stroke injecting immediate conjecture that keeps the churches debating the nature of a fictional character—God. Will humanity ever learn we’ve constructed that too?

Thanks for the meme JZ

The Jesus Challenge

The pastor is repeatedly distancing Christianity from the teaching of jesus. His most recent open question is” what teachings of jesus has led to atrocities? While it is obvious that the system of Christianity has led to a love affair with torture and genocide, what specifically did Jesus say to incite such a continuation of wreckage throughout Christian history. I repeatedly tried to make it clear, that intensional or not, unrestrained Christian religion has led to force and violence. Whether this is by design or not is not the point. The point is that it has happened repeatedly through families, villages, towns and countries where the religious have had unfettered control over their peoples. If they knew this would happen, shame on them, if they didn’t, some all-knowing deity. Either way, they knew or they didn’t.

My first answer was to quote “go ye into the world and preach my gospel” and when refused “dust off your feet as a testimony against them” and leave that town. Mel downplayed and ignored the gesture, but Bible commentaries, written by bible scholars are nearly unanimous in the significance if this gesture. “The very dust of a heathen country was unclean, and it defiled by contact. It was regarded like a grave, or like the putrescence of death. If a spot of heathen dust had touched an offering, it must at once be burnt. More than that, if by mischance any heathen dust had been brought into Palestine, it did not and could not mingle with that of ‘the land,’ but remained to the end what it had been – unclean, defiled and defiling everything to which it adhered.” The apostles, therefore, were not only to leave the house or city which should refuse to receive them, “but it was to be considered and treated as if it were heathen, just as in the similar case mentioned in Matthew 18:17. All contact with such must be avoided, all trace of it shaken off”. (Edersheim, “Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ”). The symbolic act indicated that the apostles and their Lord regarded them not only as unclean, but as entirely responsible for their uncleanness. If he was god, he should have known this was a horrible custom and condemned it as such.

Immediately the gospel of Jesus was set to divide. Missionaries spread through the near east and infiltrated towns to preach. If rejected, a basic “screw you all to hell” was established as an immediate divide among the people, setting one above another in piety, worth, correctness, and virtue. That is from the starting gate a teaching of Jesus Christ that spawned racism and hate. Regardless of the intent, there is the underlying reality independent of what is now believed about it.

The custom on display is a contradiction to love thy neighbor as thyself, and what it really means is love thy neighbor as thyself “if” he agrees to believe in the same god.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, the final book of the New Testament as recorded by John on the Isle of Patmos, has other interesting teaching designed to fail humanity.

Men, acting as agents of red written scripture, assist jesus in fulfilling his prophetic utterance. Here are just two things that when written, must have shortly come to pass, and religious men like to help their god along as quickly as possible.

“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:

“I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of hell and of death.” Revelation‬ ‭1:18‬ (no doubt)

“And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.” Revelation‬ ‭2:23‬ ‭

(Italics are mine) Here we go, early into the revelation of Jesus Christ, sanctioned by true believers to sit back and wonder—”how could the teachings of Jesus possibly cause any harm? In the spirit of brevity, I am not going to copy and paste dozens of scripture from the more friendly, new and improved gospel according to Christ, but one more will suffice.

“Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.” Revelation‬ ‭22:7‬ ‭KJV‬‬

Finally, too much emphasis on sex. They’ve taken a natural instinct and turned it vile, while the emphasis on condemning “harlots” and controlling intercourse is a noble endeavor, men, in direct obedience became enforcers controlling natural behavior with stones and fire. God is love.

Reductio ad Absurdum

(also known as: reduce to absurdity)

—If everyone lived exactly like Jesus, the world would be a perfect place

Reductio ad absurdum is a technique to expose fallacious statements like the one above. Taken at face value we will assume it is true. In such a case, we would have 8 billion people on this earth roaming from town to town, living off the charity of others, preaching about God (with nobody listening). Without anyone creating wealth, there would be nobody to get charity from—there would just be 8 billion people all trying to tell each other about God.  After a few weeks, everyone would eventually starve and die.  This world might be a beautiful place for the vultures and maggots feeding on all the Jesus-like people, but far from a beautiful world from a human perspective.  Since the world cannot be both a perfect place and a horrible place, the proposition is false.

Fortunately for the rest of us, no christians actually live like jesus anyway. The talk is heavy in contradiction and the rituals mean absolutely nothing. And, internet christians being true to form, are as absent in practice as their god is in reality. How can one actually follow something that never existed in the first place? It is my duty to make the world a beautiful place by refusing to live like Jesus and embrace all our varieties and talents. Less religion, more humanity. Less hate, more love. Less conjecture, more truth. Less faith, more personal responsibility.

If everyone lived with grace by faith, the world would be a horrible place of reckless deferred responsibility. Reductio ad Absurdum that one!

Living It Versus Believing It

Faith in god and the traditions that come with religion creates a powerful testimony and deep convictions that what you believe is true. Many of us believed the gospel message and lived it, then, when bewilderment replaced anticipated joy we began our investigation. We encountered the contradictions and fallacies but continued to embrace the importance of faith to navigate the world with security, hope, and perspective, leading us to ultimate inner peace and joy—we doubled down. Prayers and scripture study became more intense while doubt mounted against our efforts. We lived it and gave our all—then left it because nothing added up to cover the horrors, excuses, vagaries, evidence, contradictions, and failings of prayer.

Reading this week in CS, IB, CT and various others including comments from MW and JB, I had a profound epiphany of sorts—we that lived it with all our devotion wound up leaving, while they continue preaching it’s effectiveness and truth because they have yet to live it. Their strong belief has not field tested the words they speak and write—convincing words and writings that they have heard and read without application. They are virulent and rude, cocky and smug, which is not the gospel at all, whether it’s authentic or not. The hypocrisy and guile of these bloggers is an embarrassment to their faith, and a poor representation of every day Christians that I know. Those “believers without knowledge” that are good people, would be good people even without religion.

• Good people that believe what they are told, live the gospel well.
• Good people that live the gospel very well and gain knowledge—leave.
• Those that profess the truth through faith are the most vile and toxic of them all, and the only reason they still believe it is because they’ve never lived it. It is obvious they only know the words.

Spectral Evidence

Spectral evidence was used in court during the Salem witch trials. If someone (which they did) testified that they saw the shape of a person in their room at night in a dream, it was as good as them actually being there. The council then determined that the shape of a person was the same as a person, even though they had alibis and were miles away. Also, if one had a dream with a black cat or a wolf, that too could be used as evidence against the persons spirit proving they had connections to witchcraft based solely on an accusation. This is still the mindset we are up against.

Believing you saw something that might be a vision, might be historical, might be god, might be true, can be shared with others and accounts as hard evidence to Christians everywhere. It doesn’t matter that it can be explained neurologically, or that it can be explained naturally as a bump in a road, or that it can be debunked with updated methods or knowledge, to superstitious believers of gods that is irrelevant.

Foundering

Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Ships founder when overladen with good things, or when a load shifts positions in high seas. Any unforeseen problem can effect the vessel and cause it to list and wain, eventually sinking under its own weight. Poor design can also affect the ships performance.

Horses can founder when they consume too much spring grass containing too much Fructan. Fructan is a sugar stored in grass that is typically saved for future development of the plant and photosynthesis. During early morning and cool overcast conditions grass can contain too much of this sugar the horse cannot process. The Fructan builds up and passes to the large intestine where it creates lactic acid which then delaminates the hoof wall. Sort of a diabetic type process for horses where a sugar overload causes problems and then pH levels become acidotic. Again, what appears to be a normal pasture to most, is highly toxic to reality.

Religion is constantly switching positions and foundering as well. With too much psychological/chemical/neuro stimulation without reference to reality, feelings are easily manipulated by smooth talk and big promises. Promises that don’t match with reality. Too much bible skews perception and causes its adherents to narrowly assess life through a small prism of archaic contradiction and excuse for changing morals and long explanations of why it was ok. The answer is alway more bible, which entrances the mind, and like any single disciplinary approach, foundering occurs oblivious to the host. The key to understanding the mysteries is unbelief, which is why unbelief is condemned so highly in Abrahamic religion. Monotheism has no room for tolerance, and evidence contrary to faith is easily dismissed without second thought. This is not a virtue, it is an illness. What is thought of as the remedy, is actually the illness. Horses have to change their stance when foundering, which is exactly what we see in religion when things don’t add up. But god never changes? Hmm

Horse changing his stance to relieve the pain in the coffin bone and hoof from laminitis.

The Mysteries

Nothing unravels the mysteries like unbelief. That is the key. They want us to believe, then have us solving unsolvable puzzles the rest of our lives that are easily thwarted without faith. They say with god all things are possible—the opposite is true as always.

The blinders of belief in god are the ultimate distraction to a fulfilling life. The mysteries of god are but a controlling distraction designed to waste time in conjecture. Religion is the divisive wedge that separates. It’s only complicated with faith in the absurdities of a god.

Christians Needed

Sponsors of a double blind study on healing faith are searching for healthy christian volunteers to apply etiological methods to find causation of Conviction Syndrome. Religious conviction rarely never coincides with truth, as faith and fact are diametrically opposing forces. Conviction Syndrome has maintained pandemic proportions for millennia and its time to do a reality check. I had a patient one time tell me she was supposed to be taking placebo, but she was out and that’s why she was calling the ambulance. Mama did raise a fool, now didn’t she?

• Belief is not fact nor truth
• Feelings canbe are manipulated
• Lies confirm testimony
• Truth can be boring or unpleasant, but necessary
• Reality promotes real progress
• Emotions are not the spirit
• Prayer never works. Period
• Need makes people gullible
• Preachers lie to keep you tithing
• Fear sells
• Missionaries never tell you what the internet can
• Placebo is a psychological trick. Religion is placebo
• If you try to succeed on your own, your road to success will be much faster without prayer and waiting.
• There is no substance in ontology
• Validation is the number one reason people share their faith
• If a religious explanation requires further explaining, it’s bullshit.
• Religious truth spew is philosophical wording to convince with flattering speech.
• Religion is detrimental to human growth and unity.
• If your faith has you questioning the worth of others, it’s wrong

If you need to have faith in something that makes you think you are worthless without it, that is an abusive relationship. Get out

If you qualify to participate in this study, you are part of the problem. Seek help from an unbeliever.

K-Y Jelly – A Christian Model

K-Y Jelly, a product of Johnson and Johnson, developed in 1904 as a surgical lubricant, quickly found its way as a multi use product. Hollywood makeup artist use the jelly in the horror-movie industry. Special effects technicians like Stan Winston and Rob Bottin use the jelly to create a “slimy” appearance for monster puppet effects.

K-Y Jelly is also used clinically to perform prostate examinations in men and gynecological examinations in women. For prostate exams, physicians use K-Y Jelly to lubricate a finger to ease insertion into the rectum for prostate assessment. A similar process is used in the pelvic and recto-pelvic exams in women.

The product is also widely used as a sexual lubricant. It does not react with condoms or rubber-based sex toys. While K-Y has a thick consistency and a tendency to dry out during use, it can be “reactivated” by the addition of saliva or more water.

Christianity also was invented with a single purpose, but quickly induced other untoward effects and diminished cognitive abilities. Initially, faith was thought only to cause warm and fuzzy feelings, but quickly was used to penetrate six continents. Also, 80% of infected parties developed SORTS, (stupor of rational thought syndrome), where they would blindly go along with fairy tales, as well as follow their leaders to inflict misery on unsuspecting indigenous genotypes. Also noted in double blind case study 3-16, gullibility increased ten fold. Absorption ratios to PBS* increased to alarming level, where christian faithful were seventy times more likely to believe anything they were told of a supernatural, or conspiratorial nature. The Faithful tend to accept whatever they are told from specially designed pulpits, to the point where K-Y has been essential for parishioners to just bend over and take it. And while the speaker reaps his eternal reward in cash, the congregates will still have to wait postmortem to see any benefits.

* Pulpit Bull Shit

Faith

The best meme I’ve seen for a long time. “And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭17:20‬ ‭KJV‬‬

And civilizations, and witches, and mentally ill, and children, and women, and indigenous tribes and adulterers, and….

Disappearing Hate

How many deconverts of religion have turned to divisive, discriminatory speech and hate groups? How many are condemning alternate lifestyles and supporting religious laws to ban women’s rights? How many choose to impose their lack of belief on others by going door to door, or casting stones at immorality, while practicing immoralities. None. That’s because when people leave religion, and think on their own accord, sometimes for the first time in their life, they speak in support of freedom and fairness and equality to all. That is who I believe people really are. It is the churches and their stiff indoctrinations that separates, setting themselves above others with “inspired” lines drawn in the sand of divisiveness. I know some of us struggle to make all the changes at once, but by and by, love is found. Fairness is found. Equality and acceptance are found. And for many, it is the first time in their lives they have thought their own thought, said their own words, speak what they have learned, and not what they have been told. And it is good. Very good.

Belief and faith are strange ills. They are contrary to open dialog and contrary to real problem solving. They are driven by fear and supported by groups such as ADF and others. The propaganda from the pulpits is a powerful sermon from gods anointed, but the thoughts people have and the words they speak are not theirs. They are the churches.

I am very optimistic about the future, as I know that the hearts of the people are good. Their minds have been sealed off by faith, but the real person inside is good, and when they finally leave religion behind, like waking from a long stuporous dream, 100% of them return to true love and equality. That’s a pretty impressive number to have hope in.

“Early Storm Sky”

1820 Apostate Memoir

Unknowingly an innocence of my own doing struck calamity to my congregation a fortnight ago. To me it was a most natural of decisions that caused all of the fuss, but to them it was tears of the grandest sobbing heartache. When I no longer believed, it was the only logical conclusion to leave faith behind and make my own way in the world.

Reasons for my departure were no less than two small things that glared an ominous stare into my logic for two score and two years. The first being the inefficacy of prayer, and the other being the ambiguity of the book and the conjecture of the preachers.

How many offered prayers have disappeared into the vastness of space in behalf of me and my kin? How many silent mumblings have I uttered, calling upon god to walk with me and enlighten with his counsel? Hundreds of days I dare say (with a hint of current embarrassment) have distracted me from focusing on other tasks laid before me. Waiting as I did for the almighty to give me a clear hint of inspiration, I’m sure a year or two of days was spent on such matters. And not one time in all my efforts did he make himself known to me. I addressed the issue with my current and former ministers and each encouraged me to continue on, that god’s ways were at best difficult to know, and nearly impossible to understand. I relented. Acquiescence is a terribly wasted life in my opinion as of now, although being the faithful type I did “give in and let God”, as they say. Let god do what, dare you ask? That is a good question and presume at this point you will hear my answer.

At ten minutes per day of prayer and a brief study over 40 years equals 2433 hours. Just a hundred days of my life. But if that were all I would be content. I attended faithful mind you, and also kept the building at times and performed various duties on the lords errand.

Classes to be taught and monies to count and meetings and conferences to attend to. On average I would venture a modest guess at about 7-10 hours per week. Even as a boy there was labor and classes and seminaries to attend. On the low side of 7 hours per week I could safely render an accurate guess of about 806 full days including my morning and evening rituals and not including travel.

And at what point might you expect the lord to show himself in some subtle, fantastic way? Day 807? No. That is the day I had a moment of clarity, skipped meeting and went to the river. It was over. Not one thing had worked as promised, though faithful I had continued all those years. In my mathematical studies I can most frequently determine answers of the most perplexing kind. In religion, no answer given is sufficient to cross the void of truth or evidence. Faith is a manipulative ploy with no end to measure. I will let god proceed and continue what he always favored. Nothing at all. Good day! Jim-TCA

Mixing Science and Faith

Maybe Christianity could adapt some scientific principles. They could claim it as gospel like they did paganism and mythology. But I don’t believe the two will ever mix because science is unprejudiced. Don’t forget their core! They are waiting and praying for god to come back and slaughter all the rest of us. That little tidbit says a lot about how they really feel. It’s a religion that is divisive and racist and prejudice to its core, and piety sets dividing lines to fight every step of social equality or scientific advance.