No wonder this brainwashing works on so many people. It really is an invisible sky daddy who has made everything just for you. You are not a mistake. Everything was planned down to each strand of hair on your head. Come home to me and I will throw you the biggest party ever. Don’t doubt me. There are those who would say otherwise, but I am nothing but the very personification of love. I am, as arrogant as it seems to say, more than your earthly father could ever hope to be. I know that that last one goes over well with people who were abused. However, if your father is a great guy who worked his life to provide for you, that’s okay, too. Just give me all the credit for his hard work and love, because I put him there for you. (Notice no mention whatsoever of your mother except as the womb that I “knit you together” in.)

Who you are, where you live, what your days have in store for you, are all part of my plan. Come cradle yourself in that blissful knowledge. Everything will be right in the world. Your Father sees and knows all, and he is the very personification of everlasting love.

I’m sorry for those beloved children that I completely fucked up, like Jeffrey Dahmer. I don’t know what made him kill and eat little boys. I had a plan for him, too, but I must have stopped paying attention for a while. Ah, live and learn.mobil ringtonesfrijolero molotov ringtoneright feels tablature moonlight ringtonemore love than ringtoneringtones kombat mortallisten ringtone mosquitomoto default razr ringtonesmotorola composer ringtones Map

Why do we still live in a world in which we are forced to see this every day:

When we should be seeing this?

This You Tube is worth a few minutes of your time to watch. I have to agree with Dan Barker who said, this video was “very creative and powerful” and indeed “makes a GREAT point!”

James Randi said it was “very cool!”

Michael Shermer said it was “very impressive.”

The music is called “Is This The Real Thing” by DJ Madson. It is from the movie “The God Who Wasn’t There”.

I’ve decided to rewrite the bible.

GENESIS

1:1

In the beginning. there was a colossal explosion as if some leviathan junior chemist had mismixed his ingredients. Maybe, maybe not but thus was the Universe banged into existence.

1:2

And the Debris from the blast, congealed by Gravity, settled into the third orbit from a relatively insignificant Star. These would come to be known as Earth and Sun.

1:3

And the Earth’s matter held within it the heat from that Big Bang and, with the continual pounding of latecoming shrapnel, elements were melted, vaporized, and reshaped at the molecular level.

1:4

And, either by Chance or by a mickey-slipping Deus Ex Machina, the Seeds of Life were planted within and upon the simmering Earth and we know these seeds as DNA or the Double Helix.

1:5

And as hot became cool and wet became dry, as the teaming of two hydrogens and an oxygen became plentiful, the DNA caused the cells to create organisms.

1:6

And these new organisms- or Life- encountered various obstacles and reproduced around and over them, variety became the spice of life.

1:7

And from this plethora of simple lifeforms came species more and more complex- some of which died and became rocks- some of which evolved lungs and legs and arose from the water.

1:8

And then there were Dinosaurs, huge reptiles that may have been the predecessors of modern birds.

1:9

And Chance- or that same junior chemist leviathan mentioned earlier- hurled a six-mile wide asteroid at the Yucatan Peninsula and killed all the dinosaurs in the subsequent “Nuclear winter” from all the debris hurled into the atmosphere.

1:10

And it’s really too long and complicated to lay out what went on between then and mankind as we know it but suffice it to say that there were mammals, protosimians, apes, and there you go.(Like they didn’t leave shit out of the first bible!)

1:11

And, one day, some apes stopped their brachiating and, thus, their arboreal lives to forage on terra firma.

1:12

And it behooved these land apes to stand upright to survey the Savanna for predators.

1:13

And those with oddly jointed thumbs could grip the killing clubs the firmest and, thus, died the least.

1:14

And they built shelters and fires to keep away predators.

1:15

And they called the resulting downtime “Rest.”

1:16

And Rest fostered “Thought”, the mental activity beyond instinct, beyond survival.

1:17

And Rest facilitated the development of language, a method for conveying these new “Thoughts”.

1:18

And they soon discovered that what unified them was Fear of the Unknown. For they knew not why the bright ball of fire in the sky constantly left them, why the bone-white orb came to take it’s place inadequately, why water seemed to fall from the sky, and why the herds of gnu seemed to follow on it’s heels from the place where the fireball went.

1:19

And they began to tell stories of these phenomena being accomplished by immensely powerful, invisible men.

1:20

And these “Supermen” were endowed with all the traits of those stories’ authors except magnified.

1:21

And it was very important to stay in the good graces of these Supermen lest they become displeased and, say, stopped the Sun from rising or made the rain not fall and the gnu not come.

1:22

And, still, sometimes, the Supermen got pissed anyway, leaving the new men to resort to sacrifice in order to appease.

1:23

And ignorantly and, sometimes, arbitrarily, a system of dos and don’ts vis a vis the moods of the Supermen, who they called “Gods”, was formulated.

1:24

And in different locations, there were different rules and the Gods had different names and expected different tribute or obeisance.

1:25

And thus it was that man came to kill one another over the things that they had forgotten they’d made up in the first place.

1:26

And, Lo, the Gods were distilled over time- with exceptions- into one, albeit with three different names which is still a sticking point and fighting words.

1:27

And as learning and information became more widely available, surprisingly the incidence of religious extremism seemed proportionally to rise.

1:28

And thinking people everywhere became increasingly so annoyed and outraged by the pusillanimous religious wretches that they began to assemble to plot the end of religion.

1:29

And a chihuahua is biting my toe.

1:30

And a knave known only as “Raindogzilla” decided an Extreme Bible Makeover was in order.

1:31

And he invited everyone else to take a chapter and have at it.

In the course of a recent exchange on the Mythology post, a Catholic commenter openly admitted that he could not scientifically prove that his God exists, only to proceed to mention the following (perhaps with tongue firmly in cheek):

Aside from the great proven miracles of the Eucharist,

Oh, come now. Catholics themselves admit that “the Eucharist, after all, does not look like the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. You could perform no scientific test that would allow you to determine that a consecrated host is different from an unconsecrated one.”

In his letter to the Vatican Pro-Nuncio about the recent alleged miracle at his parish in Malaysia, Bishop Su also admitted, “When I think it over now, I can see that it was good for me to be caught unprepared. Had I expected beforehand that this mysterious incident would happen, I would have got a pyx ready to get this ‘flesh’ and ‘blood’ from the mouth of Mrs. Julia Kim for laboratory analysis. This would show that my faith in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist would have to depend on scientific proof. What Jesus wants from us is our child-like faith in Him and not an intellectual type of faith based on science and reasonings [sic]. That is why some Catholics, including a few priests, no longer believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.”

And doesn’t it bother them even one tiny bit that really consuming actual human flesh and blood would make them cannibals, albeit for Christ?

Marian apparitions,

Can you say “pareidolia,” children?

incorruptible saints,

Even scientifically-acknowledged-as-incorruptible bodies such as those of the Bog People of Europe do not necessarily prove that God as defined by Catholicism and the rest of Xianity exists. I could just as easily say that Bog People prove the actual existence of the Great Earth Mother or whatever deity(ies) they believed in when alive.

miracles proven through the intercession of saints,

Take a look at what The Skeptic’s Dictionary, for example, has to say about miracles and saints.

and others I can offer no proof.

Aye, there’s the rub: no proof. Certainly not of the reproducible scientific kind. And how is this not mythology?

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In 1983, Motorola DynaTAC was loan credit bad canadian car approved loan credit bad canadian car by FCC in the United States.

Has everyone in the world gone fucking insane?? Once again: Lord, save us from your followers.

The end of the world is near to their hearts
By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.

Their end game is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah.

For some Christians, this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.

With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood, Calif., to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission — to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus’ message.

Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. Defiantly pursuing a nuclear option, he has suggested the elimination of Israel would herald the return of a ninth-century Muslim cleric known as the Mahdi, the 12th Imam. He hopes to welcome that messiah to Tehran within two years.

Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site occupied by one of Islam’s holiest shrines.

Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple — along with two 6.5-ton marble cornerstones for the building’s foundation.

Then there is Clyde Lott, a Mississippi revivalist preacher and cattle rancher. He is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah.

So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they couldn’t find even three white or black hairs on the animal’s body.

Linking these efforts is a belief that modern technologies and global communications have made it possible to induce completion of God’s plan within this generation.

While there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown — as described by Old Testament Scripture and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament — is as follows:

Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years; the Holy Temple is rebuilt; billions of people perish during seven years of natural disasters and plagues; the Antichrist arises and rules the world; the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel; Jesus returns to defeat Satan’s armies and preside over Judgment Day.

Generations of Christians have hoped for the Second Coming, said Eugen Weber, a historian at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of the 1999 book “Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs through the Ages.”

“And it’s always been an ultimately bloody hope, a slaughterhouse hope,” he added with a sigh. “What we have now in this global age is a vaster and bloodier-than-ever Wagnerian version. But, then, we are a very imaginative race.”

Apocalyptic movements are nothing new; even Christopher Columbus hoped to assist in the Great Commission by evangelizing New World inhabitants.

Some religious scholars saw apocalyptic fever rise as the year 2000 approached, and they expected it to subside after the millennium arrived without a hitch.

It didn’t.

According to various polls, an estimated 40 percent of Americans believe a sequence of events presaging the end times is under way. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.

“Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples to go to the ends of the Earth and tell everyone how they could achieve eternal life,” explained James Davis, president of the Global Pastors Network’s “Billion Souls Initiative,” one of an estimated 2,000 initiatives worldwide designed to boost the Christian population.

“As we advance around the world,” Davis said, “we’ll be shortening the time needed to fulfill that Great Commission. Then, the Bible says, the end will come.”

An opposing vision, invoked by Ahmadinejad in an address before the United Nations last year, suggests that the Imam Mahdi [What didja say?? Mad cow disease?] will soon emerge from a well to conquer the world and convert everyone to Islam.

“O mighty Lord,” he said, “I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.”

While mayor of Tehran in 2004, Ahmadinejad spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming to Imam Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

For Christians, the future of Israel is the key to any end-times scenario. Various groups are reaching out to Jews or proselytizing among them to advance the Second Coming.

A growing number of fundamentalist Christians, mostly in Southern states, are adopting Jewish religious practices to align themselves with prophecies saying that Gentiles will stand as one with Jews when the end is near.

Evangelist John C. Hagee of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio has helped 12,000 Russian Jews move to Israel, and donated several million dollars to Israeli hospitals and orphanages.

“We are the generation that will probably see the rapture of the church,” Hagee said, referring to a moment in advance of Jesus’ return when the world’s true believers will be lifted to heaven.

“In Christian theology, the first thing that happens when Christ returns to Earth is the judgment of nations,” said Hagee, who wears a Jewish prayer shawl when he ministers. “It will have one criterion: How did you treat the Jewish people? Anyone who understands that will want to be on the right side of that question. Those who are anti-Semitic will go to eternal damnation.”

On July 18, Hagee plans to lead a contingent of high-profile evangelists to Washington, D.C., to make their concerns about Israel’s security known to congressional leaders. More than 1,200 evangelists are expected for the gathering.

“Twenty-five years ago, I called a meeting of evangelists to discuss such an effort, and the conversation didn’t last an hour,” he said. “This time, I called and they all came and stayed. And when the meeting was over, they all agreed to speak up for Israel.”

Underlining the sense of urgency is a belief that the end-times clock started ticking May 15, 1948, when the United Nations formally recognized Israel.

“I’ll never forget that night,” Hagee said. “I was 8 years old at the time and in the kitchen with my father listening to the news about Israel’s rebirth on the radio. He said, ‘Son, this is the most important day in the 20th century.’ ”

Given end-times scenarios saying that nonbelievers will die before Jesus returns — and that the Antichrist will rule from Jerusalem’s rebuilt Holy Temple — Jews have mixed feelings about the outpouring of support Israel has been getting from evangelical organizations.

“I truly believe John Hagee is at once a daring, beautiful person — and quite dangerous,” said Orthodox Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, vice president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York.

“I sincerely recognize him as a hero for bringing planeloads of people to Israel at a time when people there were getting blown up by the busloads,” Hirschfield said. “But he also believes that the only path to the Father is through Jesus. That leaves me out.”

Meanwhile, in what has become a spectacular annual routine, Jews — hoping to rebuild the Holy Temple destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70 — attempt to haul 6.5-ton cornerstones by truck up to the Temple Mount, the site occupied by the Dome of the Rock mosque. Each year, they are turned back by police.

Among those who have been turned away is Gershon Solomon, spokesman for Jerusalem’s Temple Institute. When the temple is built, he said, “Islam is over.”

“I’m grateful for all the wonderful Christian angels wanting to help us,” Solomon said.

However, when asked to comment on the fate of non-Christians upon the Second Coming of Jesus, he said, “That’s a very embarrassing question. What can I tell you? That’s a very terrible Christian idea. What kind of religion is it that expects another religion will be destroyed?”

So are all of these efforts to hasten the end of the world a bit like, well, playing God?

Some Christians, such as Roman Catholics and some Protestant denominations, believe in the Second Coming but don’t try to advance it. It’s important to be ready for the Second Coming, they say, although its timetable cannot be manipulated.

Hirschfield said he prays every day for the coming of the Jewish messiah, but he, too, believes that God can’t be hurried.

“For me,” he said, “the messiah is like the mechanical bunny at a racetrack: It always stays a little ahead of the runners but keeps the pace toward a redeemed world.

“Trouble is, there are many people who want to bring a messiah who looks just like them. For me, that kind of messianism is spiritual narcissism.”

Christian leaders such as Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, say the commitment to fulfilling the Great Commission has naturally intensified along with the technological advances God provided to carry out his plans.

Over in Mississippi, Clyde Lott believes he’s doing God’s work, and that’s why he wants to raise a few head of red heifers for Jewish high priests. Citing Scripture, Lott and others say a pure red heifer must be sacrificed and burned and its ashes must be used in purification rituals to allow Jews to rebuild the temple.

But Lott’s plans have been sidetracked.

Facing a maze of red tape and testing involved in shipping animals overseas — and rumors of threats from Arabs and Jews alike who feel the cows would only bring more trouble to the Middle East — he has given up on plans to fly planeloads of cows to Israel. For now.

In the meantime, some local ranchers have expressed interest in raising their own red heifers for Israel, and fears of hoof-and-mouth disease and blue tongue forced Lott to relocate his only verified red heifer, a female born in 1993, to Nebraska.

“Something deep in my heart says God wants me to be a blessing to Israel,” Lott said. “But it’s complicated. We’re just not ready to send any red heifers over there.”

If not now, when?

“If there’s a sovereign God with his hand in the affairs of men, it’ll happen, and it’ll be a pivotal event,” he said.

“That time is soon. Very soon.”

Alright. Don’tcha think possessing thought patterns like this should automatically disqualify you from holding public office?

Jacob’s bad luck: Is it . . . Satan?

As if beating a five-term congressman wasn’t hard enough, John Jacob said he has another foe working against him: the devil.

“There’s another force that wants to keep us from going to Washington, D.C.,” Jacob said. “It’s the devil is what it is. I don’t want you to print that, but it feels like that’s what it is.”

Jacob said Thursday that since he decided to run for Congress against Rep. Chris Cannon, Satan has bollixed his business deals, preventing him from putting as much money into the race as he had hoped.

Numerous business deals he had lined up have been been delayed, freezing money he was counting on to finance his race.

“You know, you plan, you organize, you put your budget together and when you have 10 things fall through, not just one, there’s some other, something else that is happening,” Jacob said.

Asked if he actually believed that “something else” was indeed Satan, Jacob said: “I don’t know who else it would be if it wasn’t him. Now when that gets out in the paper, I’m going to be one of the screw-loose people.”

Jacob initially said the devil was working against him during a Wednesday immigration event, then reiterated his belief Thursday in a meeting with The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board.

“There’s a lot of adversity. There’s no question I’ve had experiences that I think there’s an outside force,” he said.

University of Utah political scientist Matthew Burbank said Jacob’s sentiment is unusual for a political candidate and might show his inexperience, but is unlikely to be a major issue for the conservative voters he is targeting.

“Given that, I don’t think it’s very likely to make a big splash among Republican primary voters, but certainly if he gets through to the general election it might come up again and he’d have to explain it more,” Burbank said.

In other words, for the average Republican voter you can be a ranting fucking lunatic (as long as you believe in Jebus). It’s only after your scary ass starts to inch toward a position of actual power and prestige that certain individuals start to sit up and go: “What the flying fuck??”

[Thanks to reader Greg for sending this one in.]