Tag Archives: religion

National Crazy Breakfast

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By Jeffrey the Barak

In the tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson, first published in 1837, the hero of the story is the little boy who screams “He’s naked”. In his innocence and honesty, he sees the truth.

This little boy is sorely needed today. Today we have organizations convincing people of untruths. Terrorists kill because they believe at that moment that it is the right path. And intelligence and reason are constantly suppressed by the world’s religions. Millions believe in the imaginary, and are seemingly quite oblivious of the beauty of truth, reason and intelligence.

And even our great President, arguably the most intelligent we’ve had, right about most things, has endorsed the organization named The Fellowship Foundation, also known as “The Family,” who’s goal it seems is to ignore separation of “Church and State”. When religion and politics kill or oppress millions every day, why do we invite a “National Prayer Breakfast” to occur in Washington and show such disregard for the letter and spirit of our First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States?

Praying should have no place in our government. Religion and God do not belong there. In fact that’s the law of our nation. When omnipotent imaginary characters are invoked (God, son of God, the Devil, Angels etc.,) and these organizations of hate, intolerance and discrimination are given credibility and respect by our leaders, then the dream of fairness for all recedes ever further into the future. Minorities will be victimized, and the tricksters and megalomaniacs of the religion business will continue to amass wealth and power over the weak and gullible.

Today, the modern American fundamentalist Christians are as scary and dangerous as the radical Islamists that our armed forces are sacrificing themselves to protect us from. They may not attack in a deadly fashion with explosives, but they apply pressure en masse and bully the more reasonable people who share residence in their strongholds. If you imagine it is safe for a mixed-race couple or a same-sex couple to go, for example, into a Southern restaurant and hold hands, then you don’t realize how dangerous the American Christians are. The good people of the South are being taught intolerance, dressed up in a cloak called “Family Values”. And of course the most obvious victims are the Americans who were born gay, but it does not end with them.

By legitimizing American religion in the American government we are sowing the seeds for an internal culture war, and reinforcing narrow-mindedness and hatred. Those who do not comply with the predominant philosophy will be the victims.

Human beings, ordinary men and women, are using the God myth to control people for their evil ends, and they have succeeded, because belief in God is legitimized and made to seem correct and normal. If you dare to interrupt a prayer at the start of a sporting event, you are being “disrespectful”, but why is the inclusion of a prayer, when religious affiliation is not required of a person attending, not also disrespectful? After all, we non-believers have the law and the Constitution on our side, don’t we?

Personally I feel disappointment when I see my President endorsing an organization such as The Family. But I put my feeling aside and continue to support him as the least unreasonable man in Washington. Perhaps the outcry should not be directed at the President himself, but we need that innocent and honest little boy from The Emperor’s New Clothes to jump up and shout out the truth, and stop the crazy train before anyone else gets victimized.

Jeffrey the Barak is a non-believer, and is proud to live in a free country, with a reasonable constitution.

The Nice Manifesto

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By Jeffrey the Barak

In the story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, adults are persuaded to accept a false reality, which is eventually shattered by one little boy, who voices  a true observation that instantly makes the adults realize they were following a false path.

I too have my little boy, the eternally young Lamb Borghini, who although tiny and innocent, has a great skill  for pointing out the obvious when I am being silly, or when I am wrong. His often repeated mottos include “world peace”, “civil liberties” and “stop global warming”.

His words of course come straight from my wife, a person of great wisdom, and someone who is simply unable to chose to not do the right thing, or not be nice.

But regardless of the true source, Lamb’s philosophy is simple, true and correct, and it can be applied to very much more complicated behavior in world politics. In world politics, leaders are all too often driven by greed, Sadism, spite, hatred, ignorance, fear, aggression and other ugly aspects of human behavior, and the result is, in a word, unfairness.

It is unfair to exploit a person or entity for the gain of another, and it is certainly unfair to hurt or kill others. I mean this is just plain logical common sense. It cannot be justified by observing non-human animals in the competition to survive. Because we humans can conceptualize good and bad, we are then responsible to choose to be good.

Being bad can be mildly harmful, as in the case of the school bully, or very harmful as in the case of the national leader who practices genocide, or anything in-between.

So when looking at the behavior that gives us the most trouble today, I wonder why Lamb’s simple philosophy cannot be applied.

Why would someone use, for example, a religion, to come up with a plan to misinform gullible children and adults about the true reality, and end up making them think that conducting a suicide bombing, can be good, as opposed to bad?

In Africa, generations of normal kids are transformed into fighters who go on rampages, dismembering, raping and murdering other people just like them. Why does any one of them think that this could be anything other than completely wrong?  Who is responsible for making this their reality?

It’s too easy to blame religion for everything, although on a broad scale it is hard to find a common violent or dishonest act that is not tied into a certain brand of a particular religion or political movement. But religion is one of the easiest ways to make normal people into evil ones. You see, in order to have religion, you have to have faith, which is essentially a suspension of disbelief. If you can be taught to believe that the approximately three centuries old idea of a magic man who made everything is real, you can apparently also be taught to believe that you should run out and murder all redheads called Joe, because your structure of belief has strayed too far from the path of logic and reality.

And so even leaders of very small groups of people, for example the infamous Charles Manson, can lead hereto normal people into evil acts and cause terrible outcomes.

And yet even people who understand that religion is just a new idea that started a micro-billionth of a moment back in the history of time, can still be murderers, if they do not follow the path of good, which is independent of any movement such as religion etc.

If Lamb’s principals were followed by everyone, there would not be war, murder, gangster violence, racial hatred, repression of female people, or any of the other ugliness that we see around us.

Even if we focus, not on murder and war, but on social and economic issues of everyday government, we see blatantly dishonest people getting their way. A good party with all good intentions cannot make progress in government because an opposition party blocks all their ideas in order to try to get themselves back into power, and this is driven by greed. And this is at government level.

The same philosophy extends down to the mundane. It extends to households, relationships and to a sole individual’s own choices that barely affect anyone else.

If everyone knew Lamb, or if everyone could learn ethics from the purely good kids in the kindergartens, all our evil would pass into history. We would all be….  nice.

Belief: Step One to Knowing Who You Are

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By Matthew David Ward

In this short rant, writer Matthew David Ward shares with us this stage in his personal development. He is expressing the realization that he is free to believe whatever he determines to be the truth, regardless of pressure from those around him.

I guess the first step in self improvement is to figure out who you are and what you believe. Without knowing yourself how can you improve? So, in spite of living in a Bible-thumping, George W. Bush loving area, I tend to be in the minority and walk against the grain. I have a very complicated view on organized religion. But, basically, I believe it does good in the sense of fellowship, support and peace it provides to the congregation. Once it gets into the “I’m right, you’re wrong” area, I part ways. I have nothing against any religion, but I don’t buy into any of them either. I’m completely satisfied with my own spirituality separate from the organized religions. And don’t get me started on King Bush II.

I also seem to be in the minority in my area when it comes to my stand in gay rights. I’m not a homosexual myself, but I do believe they should have more rights than they get now (be able to marry, at the top of the list). This is the main reason I am very supportive in separating church and state (the Christian bias in the law seems to be the main reason given why homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to marry). We live in the “Land of the Free” yet we still ostracize certain groups of people. We do it with so many groups and it’s really sad. I’ll just add a note that it happened with slavery and we finally got past that (for the most part). I’ll step away from this subject since I could go on and on.

I tend to develop my own beliefs and thoughts. I got this way from reading a lot and trying to understand others. The fact that I wasn’t raised in a religious household or background allowed me a more open view. We are all human beings after all. No one better than the other. We’re all fighting the same damn fight, but we’re still holding and pushing each other back. I don’t want to be part of that. There’s already too much hate, prejudice and anger in the world.

I used to back down when people asked me what I believe or thought because I was always in the minority. I came from Eastern Kentucky (not necessarily the most open minded area) to the heart of Bush Country. I think I used to believe my opinion counted less than someone else’s as if their beliefs were always one step ahead of mine. This is a dangerous way to think and I’m beginning to allow myself the knowledge my opinions and beliefs are just as valid as everyone else’s. So, only in accepting and standing by what I believe will I actually be able to grow as a human being. Maybe this has been what has been holding me back for so long?

Matthew David Ward is a 21-year-old college student who currently makes his home in Tennessee with his beloved border collie. He is an amateur poet and writer. He currently shares his opinions and thoughts via his webblog, The World As I See It (http://matthewward.blogspot.com).

Fizzrail and Ballystein

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Once upon a time there was a land in the Middle East that contained a variety of ancient peoples. There weren’t a lot of people by today’s standards, about as many as you might find in a small country town in Yorkshire or California, but there they were, white, brown and black tribal people who had migrated to the land which was eventually to become Fizzrail or Ballystein, depending on your point of view.

Technology imported from the Far East, Africa and the future Iraq enabled these exceptionally intelligent and beautiful primitives to develop a widespread agricultural society. Although they were of a variety of racial backgrounds, they were essentially one nation. They lived in peace together apart from the occasional territorial squabble, which at worst, led to a bout of warlike activity resulting in the deaths of a few hundred young adult males here and there.

Unfortunately something happened around three and a half thousand years ago that spoiled the whole thing. That thing which happened is known today as monotheism, or belief in one God. As far as we can tell, no one in our inconceivably ancient world ever believed in God until around a mere three and a half thousand years ago. The intellectuals at the time devised a whole new world history and using the best knowledge available from their discussions they decided to figure out the age of the universe from the time of its “creation” until their present time. The result of which can be seen today in the Glueish calendar year of 5760.

Anyway, some of the people in the region, missed out on this new fad and so it came to pass that some people ended up being Glueish, and some hereto identical people ended up becoming the local Larabs.

As time went by, a lot of the Glueish people decided to leave and spread themselves around their flat world with its heaven in the sky above. Some went to Southern India and ended up disappearing. Some went to China and also disappeared. Some went to Ethiopia, but it’s said that the Ethiopian Glues might actually have joined in the fun in more recent years. Many went to Spain, and many more went to Russia and Eastern Europe, including a large number of tiny countries that would eventually become Germany.

A lot of people were a little unsettled by the Glues and their different way of doing things so in many cases mass murders were used to make the locals feel better. This became quite a tradition, celebrated even today by ugly white kids with very short hair.

But even bigger than all of that, the next big thing happened back in Fizzrail and Ballystein. An exceptionally cool intellectual by the name of Cheezers popped up and made a whole bunch of people feel great with his radical new concepts based on peace and love. The ideas seemed to be free of charge at first, but there was a hidden price. Just as with Gluedyism a millennium and a half earlier, the followers of Cheezers had to suspend their disbelief and therefore their rationality by using a tool known as faith and accept wholeheartedly the idea of an all-powerful being who had created everything in the universe.

After Cheezers had been executed in the usual disgusting barbaric manner of the day, his followers decided to spread his word using militant political methods. Using fear they converted millions of people to the new belief system. The converts were afraid not only of the foretold consequences of not joining the gang, but also of the swords and other weaponry that the spreaders of the new idea were only too pleased to use on those who demonstrated any reluctance to convert.

The third part of the puzzle came about six hundred years later. Another amazing character called Moe, launched his Election 622 tour and succeeded in creating the third major religion, Hisbam.

So the stage was set in old Fizzrail and Ballystein. Three big ideas known as Gluedyism, Krispysanity and Hisbam coexisted to divide the people who had so recently been all the same. And the leaders and officers of those three great organizations enjoyed immense power over the lives, minds and wallets of the people and their governments.

Despite this, as time went on, the world as a whole became a better place for humans to live. Illnesses could be cured, inventions could be used, average life spans increased dramatically and at no time did the future ever look darker than the past.

But while all this was happening there was also the dark side. Wars took place between the armies of people who imagined they were different from each other in some way. Various kinds of people were massacred and exterminated for a variety of reasons. People grouped together with the people most like themselves until a situation was reached where if you were to ask someone to describe themselves, the first thing they would say would be something like, “I’m black/white/Glueish/Hisbamic/Krispyan etc. Oh and by the way I’m a doctor and I have one eye.”

After the biggest incident of selective murder in the mid 20th Century, during which millions and millions of people were murdered, including, but not limited to, six million Glues, the politicians of the day got together and decided that it would be nice if some of the surviving Glues could go back to the approximate location of their origins and create a new place to live called Fizzrail.

Unfortunately, some people from the ancient times, who never really left, were still there. They thought the place was called Ballystein. Anyway using amazing ingenuity, the Glues created a beautiful place out of an ancient and ugly mess. The new Fizzrail was like a paradise if you didn’t think too hard about it or look too closely.

Choosing to ignore the far left Socialist politics, the constant threat of war with the neighbors, and the terrible segregation that immediately existed with the creation of the nation, world leaders fell in love with the new Fizzrail with its industry and army and air force and beautiful teenage girl soldiers in miniskirts and little shorts.

The wealthy Glues in America and England poured money into the nation and retired to condominiums there and absorbed the local point of view through the local and world media.

However, some of the Ballysteinans were exiled abroad with deeds to land that they no longer owned. Land that was now covered by a whole new world.

And in Fizzrail, hidden things went on, which would eventually enrage the native Ballysteinans. For example, an entire Ballysteinan town would have to wait a week for its municipal water supply to be turned on for two hours, and then off again until the following week, while right next door a Fizzraily resort would be enjoying its green lawns and swimming pools.

Something had to give, and now we are here in August 2001. It seems that only a hereto-unknown genius would have any chance at averting an impending festival of death. Thousands of these fictitious Fizzrailys and Ballysteinans are about to die in an ever-escalating hatefest.

If this were real, if there really was a Fizzrail, or a Ballystein, it would be a terrible thing to watch.

So what about the real world? Taking the population as a whole we have approximately 33% Christians, 18% Moslems and 1/3% (a third of one per cent) Jews. What would happen if everyone suddenly woke up one morning and felt nothing but love for their fellow Man? What if all the hate would just suddenly vanish? What if they woke up the second morning and suddenly they didn’t believe in God anymore, just like a few thousand years ago before anyone had thought of God in the first place?

I don’t think that would be possible in our fictitious lands of Fizzrail and Ballystein, but it would be a beautiful thing if it were to happen in the real world!

Important note: The above tale is a work of light fiction. Any similarity to any actual place, race, Superbeing, religion or historical sequence of events is purely coincidental.