www.freethoughtperspective.net

STEPHEN VAN ECK

America was founded originally and prominently by Puritans, but when it came to formally founding it, this was achieved by Deists, Unitarians, Freemasons, and liberal Episcopalians—anything but Puritans. There’s been an essential tension ever since between the Enlightenment vision of the founders—who Puritans have been taught to reverse while utterly misconstruing—and the Puritan myth of the new Jerusalem, the Shining City on the Hill. The discrepancy between these two images of America is the root of the present-day “Culture War”, declared by modern-day Puritans and waged almost unilaterally, while the rest of us simply live life.

One of the most pitched battles in this Culture War is over secularism. The Right Wing and aggressive Christians are staunchly against it. Their tactic for destroying  it consists of the frequent repetition of several false statements that reflect reality as they wish it to be. Some know they’re false, but like Goebbels believe that statements become “true” by repetition.

Here they are, and I’m sure you’ve heard them before:

1) The Founders did not intend to create a secular government.

2) Separation of Church and State is not in the Constitution. It’s a “myth” or a “lie”.

3) The First Amendment’s Non-establishment Clause was only intended to prohibit an official denomination.

4) Separation of Church and State is a recent invention of activist Liberal judges. And worst of all (5) America was founded on Christianity.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of hearing these fraudulent statements, concocted to create a false reality. And I never let them pass unchallenged. If you’d like to do the same, below are all the facts you need to enlist in the fight.

First of all, we can easily establish that Separation of Church and State as a concept predates recent suspect Justices. It’s older than the foundation of America itself! Roger Williams founded Rhode Island, and he did so to escape the religious tyranny of the Puritans in Massachusetts. In 1644 he referred to his ideal of “a hedge, or wall of separation, between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world.” In his ideal, everyone could have their own garden, not have one  foisted on them.

This concept informed our Founders, especially Madison, as they created the First Amendment. Madison, the Father of the Constitution, used a variation of the disputed phrase in an 1819 letter: “The number, the industry and the morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State.” So he indisputably believed what revisionists deny.

Furthermore, as President Madison vetoed a bill giving a parcel of land in Mississippi to a Baptist Church, writing “The appropriation of funds … for the use and support of religious societies [is] contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment’.” This proves, using the most relevant person possible, that the Original Intent of the Non-establishment Clause was NOT merely to prohibit an official denomination. Conservatives like to emphasize Original Intent. Let’s hold then to it!

The Danbury Letter by Thomas Jefferson (1802) using the phrase “wall of separation between Church and State” in connection to the First Amendment, is well-known to both sides of the dispute. For their part, the revisionists desperately try to downplay its significance. What they need to know is that, rather than issuing offhand comments, Jefferson consulted his Attorney General, Levi Lincoln, about it, writing that he was “making them [his comments] the occasion … of sowing useful truths and principles among the people. The Baptist address … admits of a condemnation of an alliance between Church and State.

The Supreme Court, in Reynolds v. United States (1879), cited the Danbury Letter as evidence of Original Intent: “Coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the Amendment.” These words are from Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, who served long before any recent “Liberal Activists”, so he can’t be so flatly dismissed.

Other Presidents affirmed the Separation of Church and State. Andrew Jackson was asked by a group to declare a Day of Prayer in 1832. He declined, writing “I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution … and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.”

Also affirming separation was Millard Fillmore, who wrote, “If any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but in fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled.”

Then there’s President Grant, who wrote (in 1875), “Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the Church, and the private school supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.”

It’s not only Presidents who understand that church-state separation is legitimate. The same attitude was held by nineteenth-century clergy, as reported by deTocqueville in “Democracy in America” (a book that conservatives flaunting erudition are fond of referring to.) DeTocqueville wanted to understand how America avoided the religious strife he’d known in Europe, and, asking the clergy, “I found that they differed in matters of detail alone, and that they attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state.”

So now we’ve documented that Separation is not a recent imposition. Also that the Non-establishment Clause is more encompassing than the minimalist position advanced by the Religious Right. Should anyone doubt that the Founders intended to create a secular government, they need to see Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli (1797): “The government of the United States is not founded in any sense on the Christian religion.” Those who know about this treaty and who take the revisionist side strive to downplay this, too. But that’s not a tenable position when it’s pointed out that the text was cleared by the attorney General and passed unanimously by the Senate, with no record of any objection to Article 11. There’s your Original Intent. And keep in mind that Article VI of the Constitution says that all treaties when passed become the Law of the Land.

The Constitution is a wholly secular document that doesn’t even mention God at all. So how can it possibly be “based on Christianity” as some claim? The Preamble does not say, “We the People of the United States, in order to advance the Christian Faith …” If the Founders had wanted it so, they would have written it that way.

Yet the Christian Nation proponents do their feeble best to deny reality. “Pat” Robertson goes off the deep end when he often says, “Separation of Church and State is not in the Constitution. It’s in the Soviet Constitution” (as if it’s all some sort of commie plot). Sure it’s in the Soviet Constitution—in imitation of ours, which is much older. And like everything else in that defunct document, it was not worth the paper it was printed on. It would seem that there’s some things about our Constitution that “Pat” wishes were likewise defunct.

Instead of bringing up the Soviet Constitution, he might have brought up the Constitution of Japan, which also creates a separation between religion and government. A constitution that was written for them by Douglas MacArthur, based on ours. Would Robertson still accuse him of ripping off the Soviet Constitution?

Most revisionists, including Robertson, are fond of arguing that Separation of Church and State is not in the Constitution because those exact words are not there. This is a moronic argument, particularly from a lawyer. Neither are the words “separation of powers”, “checks and balances”, and “right to a fair trial”, and who would argue that these concepts are not part of our system of government? Although they would summarily (and arrogantly) reject any Supreme Court decision of the past 67 years that happens to go against their preferences, the fact remains that these decisions consistently, clearly, and overwhelmingly ratify church-state separation as the meaning of the Non-establishment Clause [Everson, 1947] and reject the minimalist position that the First Amendment only prohibits an official sect [McCollum, 1948]. Like it or not, it’s settled law.

Yet they continue to argue. And like Orwell, they believe that he who controls the past controls the future, so they are attempting to rewrite the past along theocratic lines. Their alliance with (or takeover of) the Republican Party has paid dividends. They’ve managed to stack the Supreme Court with four real ideological activists who dare to reject any and all settled precedents in the area of church-state law, plus a shaky swing vote. We must not let their subversive efforts succeed with the addition of a solid fifth vote. This would mean the death of secularism and the dawn of theocracy ["the worst type of government"—C. S. Lewis] An essential part of preventing that prospect is not allowing the revisionist arguments to succeed. Not when we have all the facts on our side.

A. J. MATTILL, Jr.

We begin our examination of Psalm 24 with my rendition of this psalm based upon the King James Version, the New American Bible, Today’s English Version, and the Contemporary English Version: 1 The earth and everything in it, including the people who live there, belong to the Lord. 2 The Lord placed it all on the oceans and rivers. 3 Who may climb up to the Lord’s mountain and stand in his holy temple? 4 Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, that is, those who don’t worship idols, who do right for the right reasons, and who don’t tell lies under oath. 5 The Lord who saves them will bless them, 6 because they worship and serve the God of Jacob. 7 Open the ancient gates, so that the glorious king may come in. 8 Who is this king of glory? He is our Lord, a strong warrior, mighty in battle. 9 Fling wide the ancient gates so that the glorious king may come in. 10 Who is this king of glory? He is the Lord of hosts, the commanding general of armies.

Before we criticize Psalm 24, we must point out that commentators have highly praised this psalm: “This is one of the most majestic portions of the Psalter and retains an atmosphere of inexpressible grandeur.”—Elmer A. Leslie, The Abingdon Bible Commentary (Nashville, TN: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1929), p. 527. Now we are ready to point out four untenable concepts found in Psalm 24. Untenable, of course, means not able to be defended, not reasonable.

Untenable Concept One: The Biblical World Picture. Psalm 24:2 pictures the Lord as placing the earth on the waters under the earth. In other words, the earth is immovably fixed in the center of the universe. Note Genesis 7:11,  the fountains of the great deep”; Exodus 20:4, “the waters under the earth”; and Psalm 136:6, “the earth above the waters.” For more on how contrary to modern science Psalm 24:2 and a host of other passages are, see my The Seven Mighty Blows to Traditional Beliefs (Gordo, AL: The Flatwoods Free Press, 1995, second edition), pp. ii, 3-8.

Untenable Concept Two: A Mighty Man of War. Now hear this: The Lord is a strong warrior, mighty in battle. He’s the Lord of hosts, the commanding general of armies (Psalm 24:8, 10). These verses glorify the Lord as a man of war. Such a brutal God never heard of ahimsa, that is, non-violence in word, thought, and deed. On the contrary, the Lord’s motto is, “Kill, kill, kill!”

Untenable Concept Three: A Mass Slaughterer of Animals. Now let us focus our attention on Psalm 24:3, Who may stand in the Lord’s holy temple?” How tragic that “the Lord’s holy temple” was not a place where one could worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. On the contrary, the temple was the bloody place where the priests sacrificed zillions of animals and poured on the altar the lifeblood of sacrifices that supposedly atoned for sins. Priests killed an animal by cutting its throat so that the blood flowed from it. To slaughter birds, priests twisted their necks. Kill, kill, kill! Thus the God of Psalm 24 is responsible for slaughtering untold numbers of people and animals. The temple was the headquarters of bloody butcher-shop religion/pitiless packinghouse piety/senseless slaughterhouse spirituality.

Untenable Concept Four: A God Who Plays Favorites. Without batting an eye, Psalm 24:5-6 tells us upfront that those who serve the God of Jacob are the Lord’s chosen people. God is proud of his playing favorites with the Israelites, the descendants of Jacob. God selected Israel as his chosen people and promised them the land of Palestine and the Messiah. Psalm 72:8-11 predicts that the king of the chosen people will have dominion over all the earth. How commendable is the action of Reform Jews in deleting from their prayer book all references to a chosen people!

“Thank God”  for Celsus, a Roman philosopher who flourished about AD/CE 175-180. According to Celsus, “the very notion of an elect people of God is worse than irrational; it also leads Christians and Jews to imagine that their myths are superior to everyone else’s, and that their religion is true and all others are false.”  For more on Celsus see my An Awesome Trinity: Charvaka, Celsus, Meslier (Gordo, AL: The Flatwoods Free Press, 1999), pp. 7-19.

Conclusion. We conclude that Psalm 24 is not an inspired, infallible psalm because it contains at least four untenable concepts: 1) Its biblical world picture; 2) God is a mighty man of war, whose motto  is “Kill, kill, kill!”—that is Kill people!; 3) God is a bloodthirsty butcher, commanding his worshipers to “Kill, kill, kill!”—that is Kill animals! and 4) God enjoys playing favorites, selecting the Israelites as his chosen people. How can any person in his/her right mind kneel in awe before such a God as that?

STEPHEN VAN ECK

Those of you who engage in debate with amateur apologists will from time to time come across classic arguments by leading apologists of the past, albeit in a deficient way. If you want to be prepared to recognize and refute these arguments, here they are.

PASCAL’S WAGER. Most of you have heard of it. It’s a popular tactic with amateur evangelists, who think it’s devastatingly clever. It goes like this: If you believe in Jesus and are wrong, you’ve lost nothing. But if you don’t believe and are wrong, you’ve lost everything. So the sensible thing to do is believe.

There are problems with both propositions. The first one commits the fallacy of Neglected Evidence. Lost nothing? What about the integrity of your mind—filling it with nonsense? What about the freedoms lost while under the burden of a false and restrictive dogma? Plus, no matter how “sensible” it may be to believe, one cannot force oneself to believe against one’s own inclinations. The case for Christianity is simply not adequate, notwithstanding the angle of self-interest. Bottom line, it’s intellectual cowardice, hedging one’s convictions. Real truth is not based on calculations of self-interest.

LIAR, LUNATIC OR LORD. This is C. S. Lewis’s famous trichotomy, likewise popular with amateur evangelists. Like Pascal’s Wager, they think it is an airtight logical trap. Basically, it puts forth three options that exhaust all possibilities: Jesus was either a liar claiming Messianic status or he was a lunatic or he was what he said he was. Lewis eliminates the first two options too hastily.

Lewis says that if Jesus was a liar, he would have been found out and suffered a loss of following, plus death as a false prophet. Well, he DID get executed, but they append another meaning to that. As for loss of following, not necessarily. Joseph Smith would have been certified legitimate by Lewis’s test. He was a liar, as Lewis might have conceded, yet he had a following that thrives to this day. And anyway, Jesus might have been another False Messiah, not False Prophet. Premise false.

As for the lunatic possibility—no one would have followed a lunatic? The Rev. Jim Jones comes to mind, and he had more followers, obedient to death, than Jesus is said to have had when he died. Premise false.

Lewis’s trichotomy neglects a fourth valid possibility: LEGEND. Christianity seems to have been a Jewish version of the “savior” Mystery Cults, which Gentiles later adapted, erroneously thinking it described an actual historic figure. It’s a more plausible explanation than Lord. Sorry, C. S.

THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT OF ST. ANSELM. I’ve seen some pretty poor versions of this presented by amateur apologists. Here it is, in all its glory:

1) Even a doubter of the existence of God would have to have some understanding of what it is they’re doubting.

2) They would understand God to be a being than whom nothing greater can be thought.

3) But it is greater to exist outside the mind than merely as a concept in it.

4) Given this, whoever doubts the existence of God is making a contradiction, since they would be saying that it is possible to think of something greater than a being of whom nothing greater can be thought.

5) Hence, by definition God necessarily exists.

This is a remarkably moronic display of faulty logic.

One cannot conclusively demonstrate the existence of something outside the mind from the fact that a concept for it exists in the mind. If that was necessary, then Superman or any other fictional character would be demonstrably “real”.

The key phrase here is “by definition”. A contradiction in the definition does not comprise proof by default. It’s mere wordplay that proves absolutely nothing. Besides, Premise #4 is erroneous, since even a doubter’s doubt clearly includes the hypothetical notion that God might be real.

Further clarity can be found if one starts by hypothetically assuming that there is no God. One could still conceive of a being greater than whom nothing can be thought. It would still be valid to say that it is greater to exist in reality than just in the mind, but this is only if the object in mind actually exists outside it! A Supreme Being would not magically come into existence from a definitional contradiction, all the less so because this contradiction is not really there at all. Just like God …

Anselm’s problem, in addition to being logically impaired, was his failure to examine the proposition from the other side, from the perspective of God not existing; an unthinkable thought to the committed zealot, who prejudges the case, and who inevitably will make logical errors.

By William Harwood ©2010, ISBN 978-1-935444-21-3, Published by World Audience Inc. 303 Park Avenue South, Suite 1440, New York, NY 10010-3657, 424 pp., pbk., $37.16

Reviewed by Leland W. Ruble

This book contains two separate novels of hypnotists and their use of the pseudo scientific method of hypnotism for economic gain. The author writes from a perspective that makes it evident that he has an extensive knowledge of hypnotism and those involved in this profession on a daily basis.

At one time, not too far in the distant past, hypnotism was viewed far more favorably and less critically than it now is. Mainly because it has been exposed in the media as not being a valid scientific method, and has been classified along with other non-scientific procedures, as an exercise incapable of achieving the realistic  results a hypnotist  may attempt to convince an audience, can actually occur while an individual is supposedly under the spell of hypnotism.  Over the last several decades performances by professional hypnotists have dwindled to a trickle. There may,  I am certain, still be the occasional magician in Las Vegas or some resort that still uses hypnotism in his act. Then there is of course, the often recurring use of hypnotism on TV programs and in movies, used mainly as a device to add interest to the plot of the story.

I am not certain, but I don’t think hypnotism is any longer accepted in the medical community as an effective means of treating an illness. However, I can still imagine Christian Science converts using the hypnotic symbol  of an imaginary  god as having the awesome capability to cure the body by convincing the patient that this god is using its magic to rid the patient of an illness. It still continues, in spite of evidence disproving its effectiveness, to be used by some psychologists, psychiatrists and others in the mental health profession, as part of their bag of tricks to miraculously cure certain afflictions of the mind. It also has been used in other deceptive ways to deceive individuals into believing they were abducted by aliens, lived one or several past lives as Napoleon, King James, Joan of Arc, or even participated in torturous and imaginary satanic rituals, while supposedly in a drugged state of being. It has also been deceptively used by child psychological inquisitors, investigating unfounded cases of child molestation to deceive children into falsely believing they were sexually molested when they were not. Some adults involved in the childcare system have been falsely accused of child molestation and have been  wrongly incarcerated because of information gathered through the unfounded, unscientific method of hypnotic suggestion.

The author uses his extensive knowledge of hypnotism to weave two separate stories of men who practiced the profession of hypnotism with some success. Pat Zubrick is the protagonist of the first novel, The Great Zubrick. It is told with great humor, while also leading the reader into the murky, uncertain environment in which Zubrick lives, acts, and thrives in Australia. As spectators into the private life of Zubrick, one becomes immersed in a life that revolves around the constant quest for monetary gain, sexual escapades, and many other humorous and serious situations derived from Zubrick’s immersion into an environment where hypnotism becomes the driving force in his life.

The author who has a wide and comprehensive knowledge of religion often uses this knowledge to draw comparisons between religious faith, hypnotism, and sex. For instance: Whoever heard of a god that defined sin as “the unnecessary hurting of a non-consenting being” and decreed that, “If it doesn’t hurt somebody, then it can’t possibly be objectionable to any sane god.”"? What was the point of being the One True God, if Yahweh could not arbitrarily decree that right and wrong were whatever He said they were, heads it’s a sin and tails it’s a virtue?” (p.20)

According to the author, most candidates willing to be hypnotized, do so, as more or less willing subjects who follow the commands of the hypnotist, while deceiving themselves into falsely believing they are under the sway of an hypnotic spell. If a command is given that is perceived as mentally, sexually, or physically disagreeable to the subject, they in most circumstances will not comply. However, if the subject, for instance a female, is seeking a sexual relationship with the hypnotist, she most likely will oblige the hypnotist’s suggestions and react accordingly in order to satisfy a sexual urge. The female can excuse herself from her actions, by mentally convincing herself  that what she did, was done under the self deceptive pretense that she was hypnotized into participating in a sexual act, not under her own volition, but under the suggestive commands of the hypnotist.

In reference to a popular faith healer and televangelist, the author has Zubrick say: “This guy is the Barnum of bullshit.” Pat explained. “He’s as much a hypnotist as I am, He makes zillions in America pretending to represent a god he doesn’t believe in. I might pick up a few pointers. If  this is the way to get rich, why not. It’s all show business.” (p.80)

And, “The Pope says birth control is a sin,” Johanna picked up one of the priest’s throwaway lines.” (p.89)

“Yes, and in his conscience it is. The Holy Father does the best he can with the limited capacity God gave him, and we can’t ask more than that from any of God’s creatures. If the Pope’s reality, or my reality, is also your reality, that would certainly simplify your decision-making. But I’m not going to tell you what you must do. That’s up to you.” (p.89)

Zubrick because of a minor sexual offense in Australia, exiles himself to Canada. He had agreed to plead guilty to having carnal knowledge of a girl under sixteen, and that all other charges had been dropped. (p.98)

“…In most of Australia, shagging an experienced fourteen-year old would get you a fine. This is the theocracy of Queensland. The Premier could take human rights lessons from the Ayatollah. The place is so backward, state elections still use first-the-post voting, like children, retards and North Americans…” (p.98)

There are numerous incidents of Zubrick’s encounters with the opposite sex. Many are humorous episodes, with the occasional reference to biblical morality and how state and religion have worked hand in hand to make offensive certain sexual acts, which are neither offensive nor aggressive, and used mainly by political theocrats as the means to further their authoritarian control over a society’s morality.

In a discussion on the subject of religion there is this humorous conservation: “I’m a Loveite,” Dorie affirmed, and Loveites are allowed to think for themselves. If a prime minister or a president said wearing red socks on Thursday was a capital crime, wouldn’t you put him in the loony bin? Yet gods make laws equally capricious, like not going without a turban or not eating pork or drinking tea or copulating without a license, and people accept it. Could a god really be responsible for laws based on ‘heads it’s a sin and tails it’s a virtue? Fanatics who bomb tadpolecide clinics accuse their god of inspiring them. Couldn’t Bible authors have told the same lie?” (p.153)

There are articles on the subject of hypnotism and reviews of the author’s many books. The Last Hypnotist, begins on p.241 and concludes on p.424.

This novel is the story of Van Kruger who studies to become a priest, but after being exiled to remote New Guinea, he abandons the priesthood, which in turn, leads to his decision to become a professional hypnotist. This also, like the other novel, is a clever, humorous story with many examples of the author explaining the weakness, imperfections, defects, and flaws, inherent in Christianity. For instance, the blunders, mayhem, and tragedies it has caused by sticking its tyrannical nose into the functions of society, and deciding with the assistance of political theocrats, what is and is not morally permissible from  the austere  perspective of a Christian fundamentalist persuasion.  For instance, ever since the late R. Reagan’s make-believe presidency, the Republican party in the USA has become more and more a politically functioning branch of  a Christian religious fundamentalism, and its never-ending attempts to achieve a political theocracy based on the worst examples of biblical oppression. Tea Party favorite and politically dipsy, Sarah Palin, is a perfect example of the religiously fundamentalist conservative. A woman who is applauded and generously supported by an adoring audience of right wing, politically motivated religious and other asinine dimwits, drooling over the probable aspect of a future government based on the imbecility of  fundamentalist Christianity.

Here is one of many examples the author includes to depict the fatuous, idiotic motives incorporated in various religions based on the biblical god:  “Surely you don’t think that the Catholic god, who bans birth control but permits smoking and eating pork, and the Jewish god, who bans eating pork but permits birth control and smoking, and the Mormon god, who bans smoking but permits birth control and eating pork, are the same god? Don’t you think he’d have to be, how do you say, split-brained with many selves?”

“Are you saying god is schizophrenic?”

“No, love,” Bjorn grinned. “You just did.” (p.289

Here’s another example: “When did I ever claim to believe in your god?” Rob responded. “Protestantism came into existence as a rejection of the kind of god that would make laws based on, ‘Heads it’s a sin and tails it’s a virtue.’ Unitarianism was a rejection of a three-headed god so evil that it would applaud the Inquisition. Then there’s Deism, which rejected gods so egocentric and megalomaniac that they demand constant sucking up from terrified sycophants. Hugieism is Deism with an anthropomorphic face. We don’t believe a god named Hughie actually exists. He represents a ‘what if?’ You have your imaginary gods and I have mine. Don’t ever confuse the two.” (p.377)

The author, not only in this novel, but in the entire book, covers a wide range of subjects related to the nonsense of religions, as well as other aspects of religious faith, by allowing his characters  to discuss these and other issues as the story develops. Anyone no longer mentally stifled by the absurdity of allowing one’s mind to be manipulated by the clergy or the evangelical fervor of modern Billy Graham’s, using their mouths to convey an insane depiction of an alien world inhabited by winged angels, or an underworld of flames and eternal fire, should read this entire book for the sheer enjoyment, intelligence, and numerous exposes of religious tyranny and its oppressive authoritarian  ambitions to achieve a sadistic theocratic society.

A hypnotist is not unlike an evangelist.  With the exception, that they are not as insane  nor as god intoxicated as  foaming at the mouth, wild-eyed evangelists like Benny Hinn. A man who has been extremely successful in convincing Christian fundamentalists he has the supernatural ability to heal people of their worst physical ailments. Christian converts, convinced that there is a living, breathing supernatural god, can easily be duped into being convinced that a religious huckster like Hinn, has, because of his feigned belief in a god, been miraculously gifted with the power to heal. In reality, the only thing Hinn has ever healed is himself, with the use of prescribed medication, and a doctor’s treatment of his illness, not through the improbable, impossible intervention of an invisible deity.

It wouldn’t be fair to divulge the ending of either novel, however, the reader will not be surprised, and if not  religious, consider the outcome, a most likely scenario for those who, previously involved in the practice of hypnotism, have drifted into another, more lucrative profession that has for centuries  been used successfully by those seeking to thrive economically through the use of suggestion (preaching), to convince a public that belief in an alternate reality (god belief) is possible and probable. Unfortunately, most of those hypnotized in this fashion, remain hypnotized for the remainder of their natural lives.

A. J. MATTILL, Jr.

In this paper we are questioning the inerrancy of the Bible. One article in The Sword of the Lord, May 28, 2010, says this: “There are no mistakes or errors in the Bible. The Bible is the infallible Word of the eternal God.” Another writer in the same issue of The Sword declares: “I have complete confidence in what God says in the Bible. For example, everything God says about the Great Flood reported in Genesis is informative, correct, and true. The Bible is true; it is trustworthy. I can rely on what it says. Pure, unfiltered truth reaches out from the pages of the Bible, and that is good news!” Now let us ponder a number of verses which skeptics regard as erroneous.

Error 1. The Bible teaches that “the earth is set firmly in place and cannot be moved” (1 Chronicles 16:30; Psalms 93:1, 96:10; 104:5). Astronomy, on the other hand, teaches us that the earth moves around the sun. Yet Joshua 10:12-13 assumes that the sun, not the earth, stood still.

Error 2. The Bible errs when it presents as historical facts the account of Noah’s Flood in Genesis 6-8. Such a catastrophic deluge finds no place in the history of the rocks. Geologists account for the present status of the earth satisfactorily without the hypothesis of a worldwide flood.

Note that when we disprove the Flood of Genesis 6-8 we are at the same time destroying the inspiration of the biblical writers who mistakenly endorsed belief in Noah’s Flood: Isaiah 54:9; Matthew 24:37-39; Luke 17:26:27; Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5: 3:5-6. If these statements from Matthew and Luke are to be trusted, Jesus himself was also taken in by the story of the Flood.

Error 3. Elijah raises the widow’s son (1 Kings 17:17-24). Error 4. Elisha raises the Shunammite’s son (2 Kings 4:32-37). Error 5. A corpse thrown into Elisha’s grave revives and stands up the instant it touches the bones of Elisha (2 Kings 13:20-21). Error 6. Jesus raises the ruler’s daughter (Matthew 9:23-25; Mark 5:35-42; Luke 8:49-55). Error 7. Jesus raises a widow’s son at Nain (Luke 7:11-15). Error 8. Jesus raises Lazarus, four days in the tomb, and stinking. Lazarus comes floating out of the tomb (John 11:43-44). Error 9. God opens tombs in Jerusalem and raises many of the corpses to life, whereupon they come out of their tombs and appear to many people (Matthew 27:51-53). Error 10. Jesus rises from the dead (Matthew 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-12; John 20:1-9). Error 11. Peter raises Dorcas from the dead (Acts 9:36-42). Error 12. Paul raises Eutychus to life (Acts 20:9-12). Once dead, always dead! Dead persons never live again!

Error 13. The Chosen People. The doctrine of Israel as God’s chosen people is a a cardinal teaching of the Bible and hence of Judaism and Christianity. The basic doctrine means that God has elected one people, Israel, from among all the nations of the world, to receive his Word and to preserve his worship. The God of all creation has established a close, exclusive, and everlasting relationship between himself and his chosen people.

Needless to say, this doctrine is unacceptable to many thoughtful people because it means that God is partial to one nation. A partial God is as distasteful as partial parents, or partial judges, or partial teachers.

This doctrine is also unacceptable because it promotes imperialism on the part of the chosen people, for it encourages them to conquer, rule, and even exterminate other peoples (Deuteronomy 7:1-4). God gave Abraham and his descendants the land from the Nile to the Euphrates, which would include all or part of modern Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq (Genesis 15:17-21). Israel’s enemies will come begging for mercy, but Israel will trample them down (Deuteronomy 33:29). A psalmist predicts that the king of the chosen people will have dominion over all the earth, that his enemies will lick the dust, pay tribute to him and serve him (Psalm 72:8-11).

Error 14. The Bible errs on the ages of early humans (Genesis 5:1-31 and 9:29). Adam died at the age of 930 years, Enosh at 905, Kenan at 910, Mehalalel at 895, Jared at 962, Methuselah at 969, Lamech at 777, and Noah at 950. By way of contrast, the prevailing view among informed persons today is that the life span of humans has been increasing during the course of evolution. Evidence unearthed so far indicates that forty was a ripe old age for prehistoric man.

Error 15. Genesis 6:4 errs in reporting that in those days there were giants on the earth who were descendants of supernatural beings and human women.

Error 16. Genesis 17:11-12 mistakenly approves God’s command to Abraham and his descendants to circumcize every baby boy when he is eight days old—a painfully cruel and senseless procedure, all too widely practiced to this day.

Error 17. Matthew 10:23 reports one of Jesus’ major blunders: He sends the twelve disciples on a speedy mission to the towns of Israel, assuring them that the world will end in a few weeks before the disciples complete their mission. Likewise in Matthew 16:27-28 he assures his followers that some of them will not die before they see the Son of Man come as King.

Error 18. Jesus alerted the people: “This generation (the people then living) will not pass away before all these things take place” (Matthew 24:34; Mark 13:30; Luke 21:32). The endtime events will happen before the people then living had all died. If Jesus had had his way, the first century would have been the last.

Error 19. In John 3:16 Jesus gives us the most famous verse in the New Testament, “God so loved the world . . . ” There is a caring God who loves the world unconditionally and unendingly. Yet neither Jesus nor anyone else can explain why people and animals suffer so much and so pointlessly in a world created and governed by an all-loving, all-powerful, and all-wise God. No God of unlimited love would have designed a world which is a slaughterhouse, brutal, gory, and vast, ruled by the law that creatures must eat and be eaten, find food until they become food. No beneficent designer would have designed a violent universe of exploding stars, killer stars, cannibalistic black holes, colliding galaxies, and erupting galaxies. Jesus would have been closer to the truth if he had informed us that the world, far from being created and controlled by a loving God, is governed by blind, unfeeling physical forces. In short, Jesus’ teaching about God’s love is one of the least credible of all his teachings.

Error 20. Jesus erred egregiously when he preached these words: “Whosoever shall say, ‘Thou fool,’ shall be in danger of hell fire” (Matthew 5:22). The following persons called certain people fools: David (Psalms 14:1 and 53:1). Solomon, the traditional author of the book of Proverbs, delighted in calling people fools (Proverbs 15:2,5; 26:11). Paul called his opponent a fool (1 Corinthians 15:36). Paul addressed the Galatians as “You foolish Galatians!” (Galatians 3:1). Peter called his critics ignorant fools (1 Peter 2:15). Jesus called the person a fool who does not obey his (Jesus’) teachings. Jesus called the Pharisees fools (Luke 11-40). He called the scribes and Pharisees “blind fools” (Matthew 23:17, 19). Jesus addressed two of his disciples as fools (Luke 24:25). God often called people fools (Jeremiah 4:22; 5:21; Ezekiel 13:3). Look who’s condemned to hell: David, Solomon, Paul, Peter, Jesus, and God. What an amazing series of errors!`

Conclusion. Are there errors in an errorless Bible? I say, “Yes, the Bible is chock-full of errors.” What do you say?

Keep on reading. For more on these subjects see my The Seven Mighty Blows to Traditional Beliefs, Second Edition, and the three volumes of my Sweet Jesus, published by the Flatwoods Free Press, 750 Lum Fife Road, Gordo, AL 35466-3357

BERNARD KATZ

In a recent interview written up in the newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the following question was put to Hitchens: “You’re an outspoken atheist who frequently debates religious thinkers. Why is religion so important to you?”

To which Hitchens answers: “Because it’s the original subject, humanity’s first attempt to make sense of things. It precedes philosophy, science, medicine, and free inquiry. It comes from the extreme barbarous childhood of our species, but it deserves respect.

Really?

From our secular humanist point of view, I thought that religion was like Roger Dangerfield’s attitude when he used to say that “he gets no respect!” Why would we respect the morals of what Hitchens clearly recognizes as “barbaric”? In one of his latest books—and a best-seller—the very title of his book shows no respect for religion. For its very odd title is god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything! Note that “god” is denigrated by using the small “g” and that the word “poison” covers the contents of his book like a toxic cloud. A brief sampling of what he writes also supports his contempt for religion.

Here’s what he says about the supposedly benign and humane Dalai Lama. “The human species is an animal species without very much variation within it, and it is idle and futile to imagine that a voyage to Tibet, say, will discover an entirely different harmony with nature or eternity. The Dalai Lama, for example, is entirely and easily recognizable to a secularist. In exactly the same way as a medieval princeling, he makes the claim not just that Tibet should be independent of Chinese hegemony—a ‘perfectly good’ demand, if I may render it into everyday English—but that he himself is a hereditary king appointed by heaven itself. How convenient! Dissenting sects within his faith are persecuted; his one-man rule in an Indian enclave is absolute; he makes absurd pronouncements about sex and diet and, when on his trips to Hollywood fund-raisers, anoints major donors like Steven Segal and Richard Gere as holy. (Indeed, even Mr. Gere was moved to whine a bit when Mr. Segal was invested as a tulku, or person of high enlightenment. It must be annoying to be outbid at such a spiritual auction.) I will admit that the current “Dalai” or supreme lama is a man of some charm and presence, as I will admit that the present Queen of England is a person of more integrity than most of her predecessors, but this does not invalidate the critique of hereditary monarchy, and the first foreign visitors to Tibet were downright appalled at the feudal domination, and hideous punishments, that kept the population in permanent serfdom to a parasitic monastic elite.” (p.200)

And here’s what Hitchens says about the humane actions and comments by Mother Teresa:

“Every single step toward the clarification of this argument [about birth control] has been opposed root and branch by the clergy. The attempt even to educate people in the possibility of ‘family planning’ was anathematized from the first, and its early advocates and teachers were arrested (like John Stuart Mill) or put in jail or thrown out of their jobs. Only a few years ago, Mother Teresa denounced contraception as the moral equivalent of abortion, which ‘logically’ meant (since she regarded abortion as murder) that a sheath or a pill was a murder weapon also. She was a little more fanatical even than her church, but here again we can see that the strenuous and dogmatic is the moral enemy of the good. It demands that we believe the impossible, and practice the unfeasible. The whole case for extending protection to the unborn, and to expressing a bias in favor of life, has been wrecked by those who use unborn children, as well as born ones, as mere manipulable objects of their doctrine.” (pp.222-23)

The following commentaries show that Hitchens has NO respect for religion, don’t they? So we have good reason to be quite annoyed, if not angered when after writing this highly disrespectful book about the “poison” of religion, Hitchens turns about-face and then says that we should “respect” this insidious aspect of man’s barbarous past!

So I repeat: Christopher Hitchens, did we hear you right?

“Losing Our Religion” by S. E. Cupp, Publisher Simon & Shuster, 288 pp., Hardcover, $24

Author Review by Stephen Van Eck

When Paris was liberated from the Nazis, those women who’d consorted with the enemy were shaved bald. Based on this historical precedent, S. E. Cupp should come down with an acute case of alopecia.

Cupp, who claims to be an Atheist, has written a trite, tedious and tendentious tone denouncing the “Liberal media” for its alleged negative attitude toward Christianity. This raised a lot of questions, but mostly: “Have you NO idea of all the horrible things that have been done in the name of Christ? Is present-day Christianity exempt from criticism?” Cupp would seem to give a resounding no to the first question, and a resounding yes to the second. Cupp bases her book on the utterly unquestioned notion that “America was founded on Christianity”, a fallacy no Atheist should need to have refuted. She even repeats the hoary nonsense about a “War on Christmas”, a picked fight by Fundys that no Atheist should credit. All this makes one wonder just what kind of Atheist she is. Well, she’s one who’d be happy to hawk her screed on The 700 Club (June 4). There, she agreed with Gordon Robertson that Christians are the only group that can be maligned with impunity. (Interesting Victim Complex in the majority faith.) Apparently she’s not Atheist enough to notice that this status more properly belongs to the group in which she claims membership.

So what motivates someone like her? Cupp is a prominent political archconservative (a correspondent on Hannity) with an axe to grind against a media that sometimes has the temerity to fail to ratify her policy preferences. (As if they’re obligated to.) Not a loving Cupp, she really hates Liberals and Liberalism. More and more in recent times, that seems to be the quintessence of the Conservative  Movement. So, gripped with festering resentment against Liberals, she’s striking back at it, enlisting Christians with a message they’re primed to hear; but in pandering to what in all logic should be her enemy she is making a Devil’s bargain. If Christianity had the monopoly of power it once had and craves to restore, people like her would be in mortal peril. The “Liberal media” she denounces stands in the way of Theocracy sometimes (though not enough). She’s blithely ignorant of the more frequent instances where the media is deferential to or assists Christianity. Otherwise she’d have no book, which would have been better.

We would expect an Atheist to show at least a modicum of awareness of the Dark Side of Christianity (and there’s a book by Helen Ellerbe with that exact title that I’d recommend to her.) But Cupp is not much of an Atheist at all. In fact, I’d lay odds she’ll eventually get “born again” and join the enemy. All the more reason to wish she’ll go bald.

And one must also wonder why a Jewish-founded firm would agree to publish a book that advances Christian Supremacy. Their grasp of history must be as deficient as Cupp’s.

A. J. MATTILL, Jr.

Long ago, as a boy in Sunday School, I memorized the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary: suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried; and descended into hell; the third day He arose from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.”

Volumes have been written to explain the Apostles’ Creed, but here we concentrate on Jesus’ Ascension: “He ascended into Heaven.” Unless otherwise noted, biblical quotations are from the King James Version.

First of all, we note that in the Bible Jesus is not the only person who was believed to have ascended into heaven. The others are Enoch and Elijah.

1. Enoch (Genesis 5:23-24). “23 And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: 24 And Enoch walked with God: and he was not, for God took him.” Hebrews 11:5: “5 By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death: and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.” This means that God took up Enoch from earth without Enoch’s dying.

2. Elijah (2 Kings 2:9-15). “Behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted Elijah and Elisha asunder, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.” Elijah went up in a whirlwind on the fiery chariot to heaven.

3. Jesus (seven passages affirm his ascension): 1. “So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them [the eleven disciples], he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19).  (2.) “50 And he led them out as far as Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them, 51 And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:50-51). (3.) “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that cometh down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven” (John 3:13). (4.) “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). (5.) “Jesus saith unto her [Mary Magdalene], Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethern, and say to them, I ascend unto my father, and your father; and to my God and your God” (John 20:17). (6.) “And when he [Jesus] had spoken these things, while they [the apostles] beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). (7.) “He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:10).

4. The Virgin Mary. Our ministudy of Ascension would be incomplete without mentioning the fact that in the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church the Virgin Mary ascended into heaven: “The Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death.”—Catechism of the Catholic Church (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994, p. 252.

5. Mohammed. Shame on us if we forget that Holy Islamic Scriptures have preserved for humankind the tradition of Mohammed’s Ascension. In the year 621, at the age of 51 years, Mohammed fell asleep on a carpet at his cousin’s place. Suddenly the voice of the Archangel Gabriel broke the silence and called on Mohammed, “Awake, thou sleeper, awake!” Mohammed saw a horse as dazzling as Gabriel. It had the glittering wings of an immense eagle. Gabriel told Mohammed that the horse’s name was Burak, the horse of Abraham. Burak allowed Mohammed to ride on its back and soared into the starry night. First of all, they flew to Mount Sinai, where Jehovah had given the Ten Commandments to Moses. Then they flew to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. Finally, they went to Heaven, where Mohammed met with many of the Holy Land’s previous horsemen, such as Adam, Noah, Enoch, Elijah, Jesus, and a few others.—Based upon http://www.allaboutturkey.com/muhammed.htm.

“Burak” reminds us of a swift, winged horse in Greek mythology named Pegasus, who soared toward heaven. Pegasus’ soaring flight was interpreted as an allegory of the soul’s immortality.

ASSESSING ASCENSIONS. Here we look briefly at three positions: 1. Rationalists, who reject belief in anything supernatural, deny belief in ascensions of anyone to heaven at any time or any place. End of discussion.

2. Some Christians, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, believe that Jesus ascended to heaven but no one else did. Jehovah “took Enoch” (Genesis 5:23-24), but not to heaven. God “took Enoch” in the sense that God cut short Enoch’s life at age 365. Jesus stated clearly in John 3:13 that he, Jesus, was the only person who ever ascended to heaven, “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.” So much for anyone else, such as Enoch, Elijah, the Virgin Mary, and Mohammed. For more on the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ view of ascension, see Enoch in Volume One of their Insight on the Scriptures, 1988, published by the Watchtower and Tract Society of New York, Inc.

3. Astronomy versus Ascension. As Fundamentalist Christians understand Isaiah 14:13, heaven is beyond the highest stars, some 500,000,000 light years away. Thus a person ascending to heaven would have to travel 186,000 miles per second (the speed of light) for 500,000,000 years to get there. Yet believers contend that those who ascended to heaven did so instantly: Bang! Just that quick! Needless to say, modern astronomy has done  away with a heaven located a few miles above a flat earth.

WILLIAM HARWOOD

When Herod the Great died, a Judean delegation traveled to Rome to try to dissuade Augustus Caesar from appointing Herod’s son Archelaus king of Judea. When Augustus rejected the petition and gave the Jewish kingdom to Archelaus, it is a matter of record (¹) that Archelaus promptly executed 3,000 adherents of the faction that opposed him.

The anonymous author of the gospel called Luke utilized that incident in a parable that he put into the mouth of Jesus. He showed Jesus quoting Archelaus as saying, (19:27), “As for those enemies of mine who didn’t want me to be king over them, fetch them here and kill them in my presence.” Even though Luke detested Archelaus and used those words to portray him as a monster, some commentators—but no prominent biblical scholars—have cited, “Kill them in my presence,” as depicting Jesus’ personal philosophy. Apart from the fact that the incident is fiction and has no resemblance to anything the Jesus of history actually preached, such an interpretation is incompatible with the reality that Luke saw Jesus as his ultimate hero and would not have portrayed him as an admirer of mass murder.

There is, however, a parable elsewhere in Luke that indeed depicts Jesus unflatteringly, portraying him as a prototype Machiavelli. Luke showed Jesus preaching (16:1), “There was a human, a capitalist, who had a steward, and he received complaints about him, that he was wasting his property.” (²) Luke then described how the steward, knowing that he was about to be fired, summoned his employer’s debtors and unilaterally reduced their debts in the hope that one of them would be sufficiently grateful to hire him when his current employment was terminated (16:2-8). He showed Jesus praising the steward’s actions and telling his followers (16:9), “So I’m telling you: Use swindled money to buy yourselves companions, so that when it runs out they’ll accept you into their permanent residences.” Or to paraphrase the verse, “Rob those who can no longer be of use to use, and  use the stolen money to bribe those who are in a position to reward you for your deceit.”

It is not known where Luke derived such a fable, since it did not come from a source also utilized by Mark or Matthew. But Luke must at some level have recognized the fable’s negative implications, since he tried to soften it by adding his own interpretation (16:10-11), “Whoever is unfaithful in the little will also be unfaithful in the large, and whoever cheats for a little will cheat for a lot. So if you’ve been faithful with swindled money, who’s going to trust you with anything real?” The incompatibility of those two verses with the rest of the fable is the proof that the whole thing was not Luke’s invention. He repeated a story from an unknown source, and added his own highly dubious interpretation to make the fable conform to his conviction that Jesus’ endorsement of swindling must have had a more moral purpose.

(¹) Josephus, The Jewish War, Penguin Classics, p. 122.

(²) All quotations are from The Protestant Bible Correctly Translated, World Audience, 2009.

STEPHEN VAN ECK

The crypto-Fascists (and Christofascists) of the Republican Party are up to their old tricks again.

During the Clinton Administration, they embarked on an Impeachment Crusade in search of an offense. They were out to get him before he was even nominated! And they were willing to use all means, fair and foul. At first they poked into the old Whitewater mess, even though no illegality there could be used for impeachment, which covers only crimes committed WHILE IN OFFICE. But when that didn’t pan out, they ultimately settled for a cheap sex scandal. Thankfully, their coup  d’ etat failed.

Now Republicans are calling for a Special Prosecutor to poke into some innocuous “Sestak-Gate”. They’re claiming the Administration’s job offer to him is some sort of illegal bribe, when it definitely is not. It is totally fair game for them to offer a job to anyone, whether or not it would foreclose other options. Now if you wanted to work for Amalgamated Widgets, and  Consolidated Widgets offers you a job so you won’t benefit their rival, is that illegal? Not in the slightest. But the GOP is hoping to make it look that way to fool the American people. (A similar Rovian tactic succeeded in railroading former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama for a non-illegal non-offense!)

Note that the Bush Administration actually bribed columnists Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher, with cash, to tout Administration policies. No Special Prosecutor there. No one was arrested. No one was fired, or even reprimanded. No one harped on it—certainly not FOX!

And Bush buying an endorsement from a Black minister (using the dubious Faith Based Initiative) is indistinguishable from a disguised bribe. There was even less-to-do over that. So let’s note the grotesque double standard here: Real bribes OK, non-bribe is grist for spinmeisters.

If the Republican Party takes over Congress, I guarantee they’ll make another ridiculous attempt to impeach over trumped-up piffle. The previous effort during the Clinton years distracted us from the looming threat of Al Qaeda. We cannot afford to replay such nonsense again, or we’ll deserve the rewards of our foolishness.

A. J. MATTILL, Jr.

In this short study we focus our attention on a book known as The Book of Wisdom and The Wisdom of Solomon. Some claim that this Solomon was King Solomon of the tenth century BC/BCE. Others regard him as a writer of the first century BC/BCE. Here we shall refer to the author as Solomon, whoever he was and whenever he lived. The Wisdom of Solomon is neither in the Jewish canon of Scriptures nor in the Protestant canon, but it is in the canon of the Roman Catholic Church. Now we’ll sample thirteen of Solomon’s stupidities.

Stupidity One (7:1-2). Solomon wrongly asserts that in his mother’s womb he was molded into flesh in a ten-months’ period. Here Solomon accepts the opinion of the ancients about the period of pregnancy.

Stupidity Two (7:17-21). Solomon claims that God gave him unerring knowledge of existing things that he (Solomon) might know the organization of the universe, the operation of its elements, and the positions of the stars. What a stretch! The most highly trained scientists thousands of years after Solomon wouldn’t dare to boast like that.

Stupidity Three (9:2). Solomon ignorantly declares that God created humans to rule over the other creatures God made. Solomon’s attitude has encouraged humans to be cruel to animals and to kill them without restraint.

Stupidity Four (9:8). Solomon was stupid enough to believe that God ordered him to build a temple and an altar to practice brutal butcher-shop religion, pitiless packinghouse piety, and senseless slaughterhouse spirituality. Solomon’s God was merciless!

Stupidity Five (10:1). Solomon foolishly believed that Adam was the first man, for Solomon was ignorant of the evolution of species. We know of no first human but only of a long chain of animal forms gradually approximating humans.

Stupidity Six (10:4). Solomon was so uninformed that he accepted as fact Noah’s worldwide flood. Noah and the flood are figments of biblical imagination.

Stupidity Seven (10:7). Solomon in his ignorance of nature operating according to natural laws believed that God turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:24-26).

Stupidity Eight (10:10). Solomon was so benighted that he called Jacob a “just man.” Solomon overlooked the fact that Jacob lied to his father four times and deceived him three ways (Genesis 27).

Stupidity Nine (10:15). Solomon should have known better than to call Israel “a holy people and a blameless race.” Contrast Exodus 32:9-10 and Deuteronomy 9:6 which called Israel “a stiff-necked people.”

Stupidity Ten (14:3-4). Solomon must have had the blinkers on when he declared that God “can save from any danger.” The harsh reality is that one tsunami follows another, and no supernatural power deigns to intervene.

Stupidity Eleven (15:2). Solomon made a foolish promise to God which was and is impossible for anyone, including Solomon, to keep: “We will not sin, knowing that we belong to you.” We inevitably sin because we are born self-centered.

Stupidity Twelve (16:2). Solomon thoughtlessly praises God for providing quail for the Israelites to eat. Evidently Solomon never heard of a basic principle of enlightened ethics, namely, reverence for life. Reverence for life means recognizing and respecting the fact that every living creature, including quails, has a strong will to live life at its highest and best and not to be eaten by other creatures. Solomon failed to devote his thoughts to the knowledge of life, his affections to the love of life, and his actions to the service of life.

Stupidity Thirteen (16:17). Solomon, with hardly a child’s knowledge of the cold-blooded universe in which we live and move and have our being, rashly assumed that “the universe fights on behalf of the just.” If the whole universe works for just people and just causes, why are unjust people and causes so often victorious?

Conclusion. These thirteen samples of Solomon’s stupidity should be enough to prove that Solomon was indeed stupid: benighted, ignorant, misinformed, and uninformed.

Keep on reading. Mattill, The Seven Mighty Blows to Traditional Beliefs, 1995; and a Cosmic Creed for the Current Century, 2007, both published by the Flatwoods Free Press, 750 Lum Fife Road, Gordo, AL 35466-3357

LELAND W. RUBLE

That’s right, she’s having a temper tantrum because she thinks not allowing a “National Day of Prayer” will lead to America turning into a godless socialistic and hedonistic republic. Sarah Palin, the political Houdini of the religious and demented political right, told her host Big Mouth Bill O’Reilly, in reply to a question concerning the National Day of Prayer—a Billy Graham successful effort to de-communize the USA—that some people are trying to enact a “fundamental transformation of America.”

She continued to assert the absurd notion that this country create laws based on the god of the Bible and the Ten Commandments. (It’s doubtful she is aware that disobeying any one of these ancient commands could result in death by stoning or some other barbaric form of punishment intended to kill the individual who disobeyed any one of the Ten C’s.) However, if she is aware of this fact, than she is more dangerous than the folksy motherly image she flaunts before the public. Palin is regarded by some on the religious and political right as not only a constitutional scholar, but also along with bubblehead Rush Limbaugh, crybaby Glenn Beck and the arrogantly opinionated Sean Hannity, as the religious right’s most prominent soothsayer.

Is she, as some have suggested, using her Tea Party notoriety to appeal to religious fundamentalists foaming at the mouth with the aspect of realizing their dream of turning America into a theocratic, fascist country not unlike what the Islamic Taliban once enjoyed in Afghanistan? Or does she just say goofy, absurd things to appease her audience of wacky Tea Baggers, hardcore conservatives, and blowhards like O’Reilly, because it assures her of a steady income on the political right talk-show circuit?

It’s not too far fetched to imagine that Palin actually believes most of the blathering nonsense that emerges from her mouth. And, to also believe that she tremendously enjoys being the recipient of funds that have turned her into an overnight millionaire with endless offers to speak at gatherings for the politically hysterical and deranged who feel neglected because policies of the Obama administration have slowed down their fascist and theocratic ambitions to turn the USA into their nightmare society of god and religious insanity.

In a sane world, a folksy, incomprehensible political hack like Sarah Palin would refrain from opening their mouths on programs viewed by an audience of several million. But this is not a sane world, and there will always be an audience of political Frankensteins, fairytale authors of the fantastic and unreal like Tim LaHaye, and the politically demented and fascistically inclined like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck etc. In fact, her appeal to those on the religious and political right is so seductive that she is assured of having an audience wherever she has (for a fee) made the decision to open her mouth and utter absurdities like that previously mentioned. The crazies that flock to hear her speak have assured her of a steady income far into the future. Her most aspiring admirers, the Tea Baggers and religious fundamentalists, are certain she is the political answer to Obama’s more liberal policies, and even possibly a future candidate for president.

I know, it’s hard to imagine her assuming the presidency, but the USA, by all indications, is not alone among nations that have elected a leader because of his or her irrational motives and pronouncements. If anyone has viewed the antics of a Tea Party demonstration, it becomes evident after a few minutes that these people are on the verge of exploding in frenzied convulsion over issues they view as socialistic, anti-god, overly liberal, anti-American, anti-gun, and on and on. If there is no issue, a bombastic clown like Glenn Beck will step into the fray, and create an issue from the Mormon theological nightmares that plague his mind. It’s not unexpected to presume his giving the Tea Baggers an issue, even if it’s something as ludicrous as claiming a race of liberal aliens from outer space  are controlling the environment by secretly beaming destructive protons toward the surface of this planet.

It would be ridiculous for anyone to  seriously entertain the notion that Palin’s fatuous pronouncements that America be governed by the Bible god and Ten Commandments be considered as viable objectives in this era. However, after making her lunatic observation in the presence of Bill O’Reilly, I’m sure there were thousands of Tea Baggers and Christian zealots clapping their hands and shouting hallelujah and Amen, after she opened her mouth. It is this bizarre group of people for whom Sarah Palin’s pronouncements are nourished and given a life of their own, have evolved into a  political and religious Frankenstein.

WILLIAM HARWOOD

A recent news report on BBC television told of the demand by an Egyptian theocrat that persons importing a device that would enable Muslim brides to pass themselves off as virgins be executed. Reading about such misogynous hatred prompts me to explain how virginity-addiction became such a widespread fetish, and why it continues to exist long after the beliefs that triggered it are known to be as scientifically illiterate as phrenology and phlogiston.

Religious believers are not noted for “prove it to me” skepticism. The ability to believe that a book endorsing a flat earth is nonfiction is solid evidence that Christians and Jews are as capable of doublethink as any Muslim. If unteachables such as recent American presidential candidates are able to rationalize that the discoveries of science are wrong because they falsify a 2,000-year book of fairy tales, it is understandable that they can continue to view victimless recreation as a taboo violation even though they have no awareness of why it was so categorized in the first place.

Virginity was originally a negative quality. Following the Big Discovery of c 3500 BCE, that children have fathers as well as mothers, a “virgin” was a woman who had never given birth to a live infant. Given the cost of feeding and housing a woman for a minimum of several months only to see that investment wasted when two out of three women died in childbirth, that made a virgin a risky purchase as a breeder of heirs. But purchasing a breeding woman who already had a child was no bargain either. The problem was solved when priestly castes in widely separated cultures came up with the solution of demanding that all firstborns be sacrificed to the tribal god (Exodus 13:1). Thus a woman was able to demonstrate her economic viability by giving birth to a child that would be sacrificed, and thereafter, by adhering to an “adultery” taboo, producing biological heirs for her legal owner.

But as early as 2000 BCE, disparate cultures evolved concepts of morality that found human sacrifice abhorrent. Herakles is credited with declaring that, “Zeus hates human sacrifice.” That presented a problem, because firstborns were believed to have been jointly fathered by every lover the woman had ever had, whether the coupling had occurred several days before birth or as recently as the day before quickening. Pregnancy was believed to be initiated when the total amount of sperm intromitted into a woman reached critical mass. The belief explained why Zeus needed thirty-six hours to pump sufficient sperm into Alkmene to generate his greatest son, Herakles.

Since neither buying a wife whose womb was carrying sperm that would eventually combine with her husband’s to produce a bastard (defined as a child of many fathers), nor adopting the child she already had, was a desirable option, the solution was to impose on women birth-to-marriage celibacy, so that children of the marriage would be the biological offspring of her legal owner and no one else. At that point virginity, redefined as possession of an unpolluted womb capable of producing a legitimate heir, became the virtue the culturally conditioned still consider it today. (The concept of a male virgin, a man capable of bearing his owner’s legitimate heir, is the ultimate oxymoron.)

But even premarital virginity was no guarantee that a wife’s future children would be the lawfully-sired offspring of her husband alone. So to guarantee that only husbands could impregnate their breeding slaves, men imposed a further taboo on all sexual recreation capable of throwing the paternity of a married woman’s child into doubt. They declared adultery, meaning the fraudulent impregnation of a married woman, a capital crime. But since birth control was virtually unknown and certainly unreliable, extramarital copulation by a married woman was automatically equated with adultery, even though it was  the procreational and not the recreational element of the act that was recognized as a crime against property and prohibited.

As increasing knowledge about the biophysics of impregnation spread, and most alleged adultery was recognized as nonprocreative, civilized societies removed it from their shortening lists of capital crimes, although Muslim cultures did not, and preacher Billy Graham is on record as endorsing the execution of adulterers. Henry VIII executed two allegedly adulterous wives (most historians consider Anne Boleyn innocent) and their alleged lovers at a time when adultery by the wife of the king had the potential to put a bastard, by that time defined as a child passed off as the legitimate heir of a woman’s husband but actually fathered by a usurper, on the throne of England and therefore constituted treason. The failure of the foregoing information to reach the masses enabled at least one educationally challenged individual to write a letter to The Times, citing Henry VIII as a precedent, demanding that Princess Diana’s lover be similarly beheaded.

Had the ancients been aware of the duration of pregnancy, the brief mortality of sperm, and the fact that a child was fathered by a single spermatozoon, and had they had the means of ensuring that a copulation would be nonprocreative, the current belief that copulation involving an unmarried woman, a pregnant woman, or a woman using birth control constituted adultery would never have come into existence. With the invention of The Pill, the belief that nonprocreative recreation constituted adultery should logically have disappeared. But by that time all taboos, regardless of the logical reasons for which they had originally been invented, were attributed to capricious gods whose only reason for banning anything was, “Because I said so.” The belief that a god’s laws did not have to have a logical basis eventually led to the expansion of the adultery concept to include copulation between a married man and an unmarried woman, as well as same-sex couplings when one of the participants was married.

Since books attributed to a god declared adultery a sin, and the original and only logical definition of adultery had long been forgotten, the victimless nature of most extramarital copulation was deemed irrelevant, as was the reason for the glorification of virginity. The tribal god had labeled once-injurious behavior a no-no, and believers were incapable of asking themselves, “Why would any sane god ban victimless pleasure?” The consequence is that victimless pleasure is today denigrated as adultery, or fornication (originally a form of false-god worship, since it meant the tupping of a fertility goddess’s nun), or sodomy (an anachronous term for the same-sex coupling that was not a Jewish taboo prior to 621 BCE). And the masochism of self-inflicted celibacy continues to be lauded as the virtue of virginity—all because believers in religion allow their deities to make laws that, if a president or king issued the same decree, would have him committed to an asylum for the criminally insane for the term of his natural life.

LELAND W. RUBLE

His opulent majesty, the authoritarian dictator of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, has made it official. As far as he’s concerned, the famous rag of Turin (an obvious 13th century forgery) has been proclaimed by Benedict XVI, as an icon “written with the blood of a crucified man.” This no doubt was said in desperation to detour critical attention away from overwhelming evidence that his priests have been engaged for decades in molesting children. And believe it or not, were doing it for centuries without any realistic form of punishment or disbarment as employed propagandists for the theocratic and fictionalized agenda of this ancient establishment of a false, manmade religion. A faith based on the mostly nonverifiable escapades of a four foot evangelizer who some deny ever existed, while other historians claim he did, but was just like any other evangelizer living delusionally with the distorted figments of an active imagination.

Of course, as is usually the case, it has been reported that the pope “didn’t raise scientific questions concerning the linen and whether as many in the scientific community consider it a medieval forgery.”

It’s an obvious realization that you cannot expect a man thoroughly indoctrinated in the dogmas and fantastic rituals of his church to reach sensible conclusions in regard to anything concerning reality. In fact, the avoidance of reality is a primary function of those who spend their existence avoiding the realistic falsehoods of heaven, hell, devils, and mystical salvation.

How extreme is this pope’s proclamation? “This is a burial cloth that wrapped the remains of a crucified man in full correspondence with what the Gospels tell us of Jesus,” the pope said. Just because someone, or more likely many individuals, were complicit in writing the individual fantasies that make up the gospels, this (the Shroud of Turin) does not pertain to any historically physical evidence for the very improbable and impossible circumstances of a man being resurrected after being declared permanently dead, and placed in a sealed tomb. It is obviously a forgery like many other antique relics that adorn Catholic churches and museums.

We can only guess that Benedict is merely continuing the practice of giving credence to another relic with the intended result of convincing his converts that Catholicism is a religion that depends greatly on supernatural explanations for its mystical and theocratic interpretation of existence. Of course, no matter how many scientists claim that the shroud is a forgery, this pope and his church hierarchy will never as they have for centuries, allow their religion to be swayed by rational scientific opinion. After all, nurturing the delusion that science is the enemy of religious faith, means that the pope and his church will avoid by all means possible, any notion that prevailing scientific opinion is convinced that the supernatural is a bogeyman invented by the religious establishment to bamboozle the public into falsely thinking such a realm actually exists.

It may be another 100 years before the Catholic church comes to the conclusion that the Shroud of Turin, and numerous other so-called holy relics, are no more holy than the pope himself. And that there is nothing on this planet that can in reality be properly designated as having the attributes of an object with supernatural capabilities. And then again, it may never be convinced that the supernatural is unreal, fictitious, and imaginary.

GARY WALKER

According to a recent news report in our ever vigilant media, Noah’s ark has been found once again. The eminent Ark-eologist, Spade Digsmore, has just returned from Turkey with yet another piece of wood that can only be from Noah’s ark. According to professor Digsmore, the piece of wood survived for 4,500 years because it was pressure treated.

Now I know that scoffers will ridicule the idea of a world wide flood reaching fifteen cubits (Gen. 7;20) above the tops of all the mountains of the world. That’s about five miles of water. But verily, the Bible warns us that there will be scoffers in the last days (2 Peter 3:3), thus their very scoffing proves Bible truth.

Some may wonder how a man who was 600 years old (Gen. 7:6) managed to get all those animals, (dinosaurs, polar bears?) on board the love boat. But the flood story has to be true because Jesus (God’s other son, before Ronald Reagan) mentions it in both inspired books of Matthew and Luke. True believing Fundagellicals know that Jesus also mentioned other Bible truths like Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt, naked Adam and Eve, Jonah and the fish story, and of course King David (Who once saw the Bible God riding on a flying cherub—2 Sam. 22:11). There is even a genealogy (Luke #3) of Jesus that goes all the way back to Adam. (Don’t read the one in Matthew, #1, it’s totally different, a trick of Satan who knows scripture.) Anyway, the genealogy in Luke mentions Noah (Noe) and proves that evolution is a lie.

So, on board the ark were the 600 year old Noah and his three 100 year old sons, Shem, Ham, and Japeth, and their three wives who remain nameless because afterall they were only women. Someone had to clean up after all those animals. And of course there was Noah’s wife. The Bible didn’t give her a name either, but Spade Digsmore discovered on Mt. Ararat a high school yearbook, wrapped in a shroud, from the class of 2500 BC with her picture and name. It was Joan. Joan of Ark. Beside the year book was a box of tea bags and a loaded rifle. Those citizenship papers, and birth certificates were “left behind” to die with their grandmothers.

The best part of this true Bible story is that during Noah’s ocean cruise, the Bible god killed all the other people on the planet because they were wicked. He even killed all the animals, including the cuddly bunny rabbits who must have been wicked too. That is a feat not even Hitler or Stalin accomplished. Curiously, the wickedness must have been caused by the “giants” and the other “sons of God” (Gen. 6:4), who saw the “daughters of men.” The women didn’t have burkas on so the “sons of God” couldn’t help themselves, and well, you know what happened next. “The wickedness of man was great in the earth,” and according to professor Digsmore, it was so bad that the people had socialized mediSin, and they watched a lot of Jane Fonda movies.

And so it came to pass, the ark ran out of gas and landed on a hill. Noah and his sons wasted no time growing grapes and producing a lot of wine that must have been pretty good because Noah drank of the wine and passed out in his tent bare assed naked (Gen. 9:21). Then they got down to the business of being fruitful and multiplying. Unfortunately, after the flood the people were just as wicked as the people who had been left behind. So what was the point, you ask? Perhaps professor Digsmore will find out someday. Amen.

GARY WALKER

As I grid my loins in breathless anticipation of the National Day of Prayer (May 6), I have to wonder why so many Americans can’t handle freedom. NPD began in 1952, jumpstarted by crusader, Billy Graham. This was during McCarthyism when one of the gods slithered its way into the pledge, and onto the dollar bill, and bumped our national motto, E Pluribus Unum (an all inconclusive motto). Americans were whipped into a frightful frenzy over godless communism and so they decided to hack away at our own Constitution. Sound familiar?

In 1988 the congress declared the NPD to fall on the first Thursday in May and that the president must make the proclamation. Why do these people, who hate American freedom, need the big government telling them when to pray? Why do they relentlessly whine and whimper for the arm of the state to grant them special rights? Is their faith so vain, and so frail that it needs the crutch of government to support it?

Fortunately, on April 15, the NPD was declared unconstitutional by judge Barbara Crabb, thanks to the efforts of the intrepid Freedom From Religion Foundation. “Isis, Isis, RA, Ra, Ra!”

There are about 30 million Americans who are not “religulous.” We, along with the Constitution, will be dissed by the president and all the other pious hypocrites (who pray to be seen by men—Mt. 6:5). Shepherds are for sheep.

GARY WALKER

Holy Moses Batman, maybe there really is a god. I must admit that I have been riding on cloud melancholy for a while now. And just when I thought the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune would never cease, along comes American Family Association guru, Bryan Fischer to cheer me on. I think I will be in a good humor all week now.

The ever so pompous Fischer blogs for the AFA and he recently had this revelation, “Bottom line: you want to know who’s running the US Army, The US Navy and the Marines and calling the shots when it counts? Fundamentalist Muslims and homosexual activists.” Really. Thank god the US Air Force has been possessed by evangelicals for a while now and was spared, or should I say saved, from this satanic predicament.

The ever so righteous Bryan Fischer got his knickers in a twist over the DISinvitation, by the Pentagon, of Franklin Graham (Billy’s boy) to a looming Pentagon ceremony of the national day of prayer extravaganza. Apparently, the Pentagon didn’t dare risk associating itself with the Islamaphobic Graham. Bombing wedding parties, torture, and of course killing a million, mostly Muslims, in Iraq who were no threat to the US didn’t bother the ever so righteous Fischer, or the Pentagon.

Never mind that the national day of prayer is a gross violation of the constitutional separation of religion and government, and never mind that public prayers were deemed hypocritical by a 1st century dude named Jesus. Do not be like the hypocrites who love to pray on the street corners and on Christian TV, to be seen by men (MT. 6:5). Every person who serves in the military or congress swears an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. They are not obligated to pander to any of the gods.

A. J. MATTIL, Jr.

In this short study we concentrate on a book which was probably written about 180 BC/BCE. This book has various names, such as Ecclesiasticus (Book of the Church), or the Book of Ben Sira, or The Wisdom of Ben Sira, or simply Sirach. Whatever we call this book of fifty-one chapters, it is not part of the Jewish and Protestant canons of inspired scriptures, but it is included in the canon of the Roman Catholic Church. Now let us focus our attention on six of what I as a freethinker would call Sirach’s screwups, that is, blemishes, blotches, blunders, botches, and bungles.

Screwup One. Sirach 1:12 declares that “the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord.” “Fear of the Lord” is an attitude of profound awe in the face of God’s power and splendor. Now we revise Sirach 1:12 in the light of modern knowledge. The beginning of wisdom is not “fear of the Lord.” Rather, the beginning of wisdom is trembling with awe before the threefold mystery of the universe, that is, meditating on the tremendous mystery, the primal mystery, and the cosmic mystery.

The tremendous mystery is the mystery of the vastness and power of the universe which is infinitely beyond our comprehension. The primal mystery is the unexplainable given at the beginning of all things. Here we puzzle over what was there first, and why and how it was there, and whence it came, and wither it is going. We think about the source of the source. The cosmic mystery is the mystery of whether there is anything personal about the vast creative and destructive process in which we live and move and have our being (see Acts. 17:28).

In short, “a sincere recognition of the truth that our own and all other existence is a mystery absolutely and forever beyond our comprehension, contains more of true religion than all the dogmatic theology ever written” (Philosopher Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903). That’s the true beginning of wisdom.

Screwup Two. According to Sirach 12:1-7 “we should do good to just people and they and the Lord will reward us. Give to the good man, refuse the sinner. The Most High himself hates sinners.” On the other hand, Jesus commands us to “do good to those who hate us and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great” (Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6:27-36).

Many thoughtful people say we should decide for ourselves on a case by case basis whom we should help or not help. Never should we expect a supernatural being to reward or punish us for our generosity or niggardliness.

Screwup Three. Sirach lived in Jerusalem and was a lover of the Mosaic law, the priesthood, temple, and divine worship. In other words, Sirach was enthusiastic about brutal butcher-shop religion/pitiless packinghouse piety/senseless slaughterhouse spirituality (Sirach 50:1-29, which is a eulogy of Simon, the high priest). Few sensitive persons who seek to follow reverence for life will endorse bloody butcher-shop religion.

Screwup Four. Sirach was intoxicated with chosenpeopleism, the detestable belief that Almighty God is a partial God who plays favorites. The Lord places a ruler over every nation, but Israel is the Lord’s own portion (17:14; 24:8). Wisdom fixed her abode in Zion (24:10). Chosenpeopleism is the basis of the unending warfare between the Israelites and the Palestinians, and should have been discarded centuries ago.

Screwup Five. Sirach screwed up when he adopted the human-centered doctrine that the Lord gave humans rule over beasts and birds (17:4; Genesis 1:28). How unfortunate that the Lord didn’t instruct humans how to live by the ideal reverence for life so that they would respect the animals’ will to live. The Lord could have taught us to treat all beings as relatives and to do the least harm to the least number of life forms and the greatest good to the greatest number of life forms. The Lord could have inspired us to devote our thoughts to the knowledge of life, to devote our affections to the love of life, and to devote our actions to the service of life.

Screwup Six. Sirach blundered when he issued this command, “When you are ill, delay not, but pray to God, who will heal you” (38:9). Sirach hadn’t lived long enough to discover through bitter experience that nothing fails like prayer.

Conclusion. We could consider many more of Sirach’s screwups, but these six screwups should be enough to convince us that the Book of Ben Sira should not be included in any canon of inspired scriptures.

GARY WALKER

And so it came to pass, President Obama ventured to the home of Rev. Billy Graham for a secret visit. As a patriotic American, I am wondering why.

Anyone who has been swilling their fair share of tea knows that Obama is a Muslim obsessed with converting our great country to Islam, burning the flag, and killing our grandmothers. Soooo, why would he go visit Graham? Is Graham a Muslim too!

Afterall, fundamentalist Islam and fundy Christianity are pretty similar. They hate gays, believe in creationism, and want to keep women in their place as subjects of the men, love theocracy and holy scriptures, blasphemy laws, capital punishment, and religious wars. They both believe in Satan and hell and demons, and Adam and Eve and Noah’s ark. And they both hate America for its freedoms fought for and won by liberals who then gave us a GODLESS Constitution. Yes, Godless!

Has anyone actually seen Billy Graham’s birth certificate?

Amen.

GARY WALKER

I was recently rebuked on a blog that I occasionally contribute my two sheckles worth of baloney to. My sin was that I referred to the tea bagging, patriotic, numbskulls as sheeple. The devil made me do it.

But when you think about it, the baggers should really be proud of the term sheeple. Afterall, sheep is a word that Christians identify with throughout their purpose driven lives. According to their own signs from below that I have seen, most of the baggers are god fearing, gun totin, Christians. So the teaple, sheeple should actually thank me for the compliment. It fits them to a tea.

Curiously, sheep are some of the dumbest animals ever “created.” They don’t even need a shepherd to guide them. A dog can do it. This must be why Faux News has barked and growled its way to become the top sheepdog of sheepdumb. Has ignorance been enthroned as an American value?

According to the inspired gospel of John (20:29), Jesus said to doubting Thomas, “You believe because you have seen. Blessed are those who have not seen and believe.” This is the puffed up trumpet call for blind faith. Blind faith is the foundation of sand (Mt. 2:26) that most religions are built upon, and Faux News is the foundation of breathtaking inanity. I leave with the words of the famous Saint Porkas Aswinas, “That’s all folks.”