MY UTOPIAN GOVERNMENT (a work in progress)
Modified 10-17-2005 7-26-2005
Modified 10-23-2005
MODIFIED 7-7-2010
When you read this just think how different our country would be if we implemented these provisions in our constitution. Agreed they would be difficult to implement but progress and change has always been difficult to achieve.
IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION AND PROGRESS TOWARDS A MORE PERFECT DEMOCRACY. WE NEED TO ELIMINATE AND REDUCE THE DESIRE FOR POLITICIANS TO BECOME CORRUPT AND MAKE THE POLITICIAN MORE RESPONSIBLE TO THE CITIZENS. THE CITIZEN ALSO NEEDS TO BE MORE RESPONSIBLE. PART OF THE PROBLEM WITH THE DEMOCRACY IS THE TWO PARTY SYSTEMS. PEOPLE ARE ENCOURAGED TO JOIN A POLITICAL PARTY WHEN IT IS NOT TO THEIR BENEFIT TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH A POLITICAL PARTY. THE PEOPLE THAT BENEFIT FROM THE PARTY SYSTEM ARE THE SMALL GROUP OF PEOPLE THAT ARE EMPLOYED BY THE PARTY, THEY ARE THE ONES THAT NEED A SYSTEM THAT BENEFIT THE WINNERS OR COLLECT THE SPOILS OF THE CAMPAIGN. WHATEVER THE PLATFORM IS FOR A PARTY “ALL” THE PEOPLE THAT SUPPORT THAT PARTY DO NOT AGREE WITH ”ALL” OF THE PLATFORM. AS A RESULT THEY HAVE A TENDENANCY TO SUPPORT THAT PARTY WHEN THEY DO NOT BENEFIT FROM THE ALEGANCE TO THAT PARTY.YEARS AGO BALLOTS WERE MADE TO SHOW A PERSON COULD VOTE WHAT THEY CALLED A “STRAIGHT TICKET”, MEANING THEY WOULD VOTE FOR THE PARTY AND NOT PAY ANY ATTENTION TO THE INDIVIDUAL RUNNING FOR OFFICE. TODAY FOR WHATEVER REASON THE BALLOTS DO NOT HAVE THAT CONVENIENCE. THE RESULT OF THAT KIND OF VOTING ALLOWS PEOPLE TO BE LAZY AND COMPLACENT ABOUT THE ISSUES. THE POLITICAL PARTIES LOVE THIS KIND OF VOTER BUT THE SYSTEM DOES NOT WORK WELL WHEN THE VOTER IS NOT INFORMED AND DOES NOT VOTE INTELLENGENTLY.
THE COUNTRY HAS GONE BAD AND THE ONLY WAY TO RECOVER IS TO REMOVE THE POWER FROM THE POLITICIANS. THEY HAVE MISUSED THEIR POWER, LIED AND MISLED THE PUBLIC. THE ONLY RECOURSE THE PUBLIC HAS IS TO WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT ELECTION AND HOPE TO VOTE HIM/HER OUT OF OFFICE. THE PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH SAY IN THE COUNTRY AND THEY HAVE BECOME COMPLACENT AND LAZY. YEARS AGO PEOPLE RAN FOR OFFICE BECAUSE OF A PATROTIC AMBITION BUT THEY HAVE LEARNED TO MAKE A CAREER OUT OF IT AND PROFIT FROM RUNNING THE COUNTRY. YOU TAKE A GOOD PERSON AND SEND HIM TO WASHINGTON AND HE WILL PROBABLY BECOME A CROOK. NOT ALL BECOME CROOKS BUT MANY DO AND THAT IS WHAT WE NEED TO STOP. THEY ALSO STOP DOING THE DOING THE WORK THEY WERE SENT TO WASHINGTON TO DO. THE FOLLOWING ARE SUGGESTIONS THAT WILL HOPEFULLY AID IN THAT OUTCOME. A LOT OF MONEY IS NECESSARY IN ORDER TO RUN FOR POLITICAL OFFICE AND AS A RESULT THE MILLIONAIRES ARE RUNNING THE COUNTRY, NOT THE PUBLIC IN GENERAL. THE COUNTRY HAS BEEN DOWNGRADED FROM A DEMOCRACY TO A PLUTOCRACY.
WE NEED TO STOP THE USA ‘s IMPERIALISTIC ATTITUDES.
REMEMBER PROHIBITIONS DO NOT WORK BUT MAKE THE LAWMAKERS FEEL GOOD. PEOPLE THAT WANT ABORTIONS WILL GET THEM SOMEWAY, LEGAL OR NOT LEGAL. PEOPLE THAT WANT DRUGS WILL GET THEM ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, PROHIBITIONS MAKE THE COSTS HIGHER. PEOPLE THAT BREAK THE LAWS DO SO WILLINGLY EVEN IF THEY HAVE TO GO TO PRISON AND THE PUBLIC MUST SUPPORT THEM. PEOPLE THAT HARM OTHERS SHOULD BE INCARSERATED IN ORDER TO STOP ANY FURTHER REACURANCES.
“ECONOMICS TRUMPTS THE LAW” AND EFFORTS TO CIRCUMVENT GALLOWAYS LAW WOULD BE MET WITH RESTRAINT.
These items would be amendments to the constitution or laws that are applied to the federal and state governments.
1.
Our present military is too good and we are paying a high price for a country that is constantly over budget and the military is a big reason for the overages along with an administration that has imperialistic ambitions and no known reason for those ambitions other than to prop up the military. We have become an aggressor nation similar to the axis empires of the 1940’s. The pentagon’s role is to stage events for a puppet president in order to further their ambitions for a world order and occupy foreign governments, especially third world countries. Rather than building up the world we are destroying parts of the world and not making friends but making enemies. The process has cost this country trillions of dollars and we the people have received nothing for it. We have a huge debt and it gets larger every day.
The wars have caused the country to loose many good personal and many are left with PTSB and are dysfunctional. The wars have proven to be non-productive and the manpower and cost should be redistributed to the infrastructure.
The first thing is we need to do is rearrange the military in to a defense force instead of an offence force, give up all the overseas bases all 750 of them and only keep the ones in the states (over 900) that service the new militia. The new militia a defense force does not invade other countries. The new militia will be a force of about 20 million reserve men and women (compared to today’s force of 2.5 million) that have been trained to fight for the country if we are invaded or to put down an uprising against the government. The major part of the militia is to train all 18-year-old persons (NO!! Exceptions) to be able defend the USA, that should take approximately 6 months at most and then they would be released into the ready reserves. The reserve period would last until the person was 35 years old and that age would be adjusted in order to maintain the 20 million personnel. We would need one general and a number of colonels that would head each branch like the air force, army, and navy etc. that training command would then direct any call up when a need arrived. Specialties would be preserved. The pay for training a recruit would be a subsistence that would provide for the basic requirements for life on a military base. Pay for the regular militia would be based on rank, longevity and normally associated with civilian jobs with similar educational requirements.
2.
Either get rid of the senate or make it a democratic body by allowing each senator to represent a portion of the population. For instance if we had 200 million people and we wanted to have 100 senators then each would represent 2 million people and as the population grew the senator would represent more people, but no more than the 100 senators would ever be elected. Term limits would also be required and all representatives would be subject to term limits and the retirement system would be the social security system and 401K retirement systems. The House of Representatives would remain the same as we now have with the above requirements.
The president and all representatives would be elected by popular vote. Pay for service would be voted on by the people. Yes, the senatorial district would cross state lines.
3.
NASA would be restrained to development for the common good medicines, agriculture, environment, fisheries, energy sources, etc. Minor investigations into the universe but no effort would be put forth to go to the moon or nearby planets because it has just proven to be a waste of time and money. NASA needs to admit that even if they found water on the Moon or Mars nothing would happen as a result of the finding and the possibility of finding water on those two planets is impossibly due to the low atmospheric pressure. Any water would evaporate in an explosive manner.
Satellites have proven to be a boom to the people and more development would be beneficial.
4.
The major government role would be to develop the infrastructure and defend the country. These would include roads, railroads, airports, harbors and city and country needs.
5.
Deficit spending would not be allowed and the current debt would be eliminated as soon as possible. The interest that would normally be paid would then be used for the infrastructure.
6.
The socially security would have to support itself and when the fund ran out of money or became low on money the people would have to make up the difference with more payroll taxes. Or the government would set out how the payments would decrease and make it available to the public so the public could arrange its retirement when the social security trust fund goes to zero.
7.
Industry would have to provide health insurance for all workers.
Workers could retire at age 65 and then be covered by the optional Medicare. The unemployed would be covered by a supplement and a limited unemployment compensation.
8.
A computer program would accomplish reapportionment for the government districts. This would apply to all state and federal elected officials. The reapportionment parameters would not include a person’s political party and would be based on the population distribution. The major considerations would be geographic, trying to make the district as small as possible to benefit the people running for office, so the area would be very geometric.
9.
Foreign aid would be dispensed with until after the government was out of debt. When foreign aid was given a US company using as many US citizens as possible and US materials along with local labor and local materials when applicable would implement the aid. The aid would provide for infrastructure that would help the country to support itself. No money would be given to foreign governments. Low responsible bidder would be awarded the contracts.
10.
Drugs would not be outlawed, however education at an early age would be a requirement that would teach kids the rights and wrongs about life and drugs. This would eliminate the drug dealer and the crime that goes along with the prohibition of drugs, and therefore the need to police those actions. People that used drugs if they could find them would be made responsible for their actions and all people that harmed another would have to go to prison for long sentences REGARDLESS OF AGE. Citizens would have the right to be stupid.
11.
Citizens would be responsible for their own bodies and the government would not interfere with that responsibility.
12.
Citizens would be required to vote for items that needed citizen votes and they would vote each month or as often as necessary. Items that would require a vote by the citizen would be:
a. Budget, federal, state, local,
b. Elect representatives and impeach when the public decided they were not acting for the benefit of the public.
c. Etc
The citizens would be able to vote out of office any elected official. An impeachment effort and not controlled by the three branches of the government. The representatives would make the budget and approved by the public. Any citizen could run for office. No political parties would be recognized on the ballot. Runoff elections would be required if the candidate did not receive a majority of the ballots. The runoff elections would be held within two weeks of the major election. Private political parties would be acceptable.
Citizens would be required to vote on the items that are put fourth, approximately once per month. This would be an effort to get the public engaged in the running of the government and an effort to make the government more of a democracy.
And/or
Have scientific polls that show public support and if the poll shows a loss of confidence (less than 50% support) a recall election would be immediately called and within a month, voted on and a candidate wanting the office and getting more than 50% of the vote would replace the recalled candidate immediately. In cases where the new candidate did not get enough votes for a majority, a runoff election would be called for the two candidates receiving the most votes within 2 weeks following the recall election. The electorate could vote two weeks prior to the voting deadline and voting would take place at various polling places and by electronic means with a paper copy generated as a backup. With the registration card that all citizens would have they could vote at shopping centers, over the Internet, libraries, gas stations and other designated convenient areas with permanent voting machines similar to ATM machines.
If the candidate was voted out of office he would be immediately relieved of his office and an assistant would take his place until the new elected official could take his place, within the two weeks period.
The rational for the new elections is that the term of office is too long and the elected official can do great damage when he is no longer accountable to the electorate. The long period of time between today’s nomination and the elections allows lots of special interest to influence the candidate. This special interest has demonstrated that the candidate is beholden to the special interest and not to the public that they should be serving.
A short electioneering period does not allow the candidate to spend much money and allows people with limited means to participate in the democratic process.
The candidate would be more responsive to the public if he/she were subject to a quick recall.
Too many “good” politicians are drawn into illegal activities after being elected as a “do good” candidate and subject to the freedom as an elected official. In other words too many become corrupt after gaining the office. The candidate needs to have a “constant oversight” in order for him to do the work of the public and not be corrupted.
WHERE CAN YOU GET A JOB FOR FOUR YEARS AND EXPECT TO HAVE THAT JOB WITHOUT BEING FIRED FOR POOR PERFORMANCE?? ONLY IN THE GOVERNMENT.
13.
Part of the swearing in dialog would include the requirement that the elected official would tell the truth to the public while in office. THE ELECTED OFFICIAL WOULD BE UNDER OATH FOR THE DURATION OF HIS TIME IN OFFICE.
14.
All communications within the government would be made public. The government would keep no secrets. The secrets that the government has are only to keep the citizens from knowing what the government is doing. Currently Foreign governments can obtain secrets by buying the secrets from persons willing to sell the secrets.
15.
Each voter would have a voter registration card that had his personal ID that would allow him or her to vote and the voting system would only allow one vote per issue or voting period for each item with that ID. The cards would be given to all citizens. (No charge) Going further the card could also show the driver of a motor car was legal and when you leave and return to the states after traveling in foreign countries would show he/she was a citizen, and show he was of legal age to consume alcohol, and other times when ID was required. Used as an ID the card would identify the worker and show where he/she worked by reading the card at the company’s place of doing business. An imbedded photo of the citizen and /or fingerprint and eyeball ID would be placed on the card.
16.
The government would give no subsidies; if you can’t compete then get out of the business. Pork would be outlawed and/or subject to voter approval. ??
For pork spending each state would levy a tax subject to voter approval for the improvement in the infrastructure. The tax would be applied to each person.
Each person would be charged a tax for the operation of the government, and that would be the budget. A living minimum wage would be established that would satisfy the normal requirements for subsistence. Wages above that amount would be taxed a fixed percentage when calculated would equal the budget divided by the number of taxpayers with their income that earned more that the minimum wage. ???
17.
Speed limits would be open (no limits). Reckless driving would have severe penalties for harming other people (REGARDLESS OF AGE) but would allow people to kill themselves.
Justification for all police and fire departments would be a requirement. In other words they would have to show just cause for their spending. Sometimes it’s better to let a $200,000 building burn as opposed to spending $1 million to save it… fire insurance would be a requirement along with auto insurance.
18.
Guest workers would be acceptable provided jobs existed for the type of work they could provide. The unemployed would have to leave the country. If farm labor had a surplus the worker program in that area would be suspended until the demand showed a need for more workers.
Each guest worker would be issued an ID card that would show his status and he would use it to show where he was working each week that he was in the country. The card would have the same features as the voter ID card but show he was not a legitimate voter. After his job expired he would no longer be able to receive compensation and would have to leave the country.
19.
Babies born in this country would become citizens only if one of the parents was a citizen of this country.
20.
Questions to ask the candidate or answers he/she should profess at the start of his campaign during his opening statements.
1 would you take an oath to always tell the truth while in office?
2.do you support the right of a person to choose how to treat his/her body?
3. Do you support the right that the government should not interfere with a persons right to choose how to conduct his/her life provided no harm is done to another person?
4.the above presupposes that the person does no harm to another individual. When harm was done it would require prosecution and severe penalties (REGARDLESS OF AGE).
21.
Pardoning convicted felons would not be allowed for either federal or state officials such as the president and governors.
22.
THE SUPREME COURT AND LESSOR COURT JUSTICES
The choosing of justices in the past has worked fairly well but let a political dictator enter the picture and the whole idea falls apart. The past has also had poor placement of the judicial system. Therefore we need a new more foolproof way of choosing justices. The idea of a Star Chamber has always been a fascinating way to solve problems.
The Star Chamber would be a secret group that administered the selection of judges for the federal and each states judges. Each chamber would be selected from applicants wishing to be judges that filled out an application and the application would be assigned a number, the application minus the name, race, sex, and address would be forwarded to the chamber. If the chamber decided the applicant was acceptable then he/she would be put in a lottery. The lottery would have no bounds and when a position was available a random number from the lottery would be drawn and that person would fill the vacant position.
A lottery for the chamber using the same criteria would also be put in place for persons wishing to be on the chamber, and when a position became empty the random number would be chosen to sit on the chamber. The chamber could have term limits but the normal turnover should flush the system along with sickness and resignations.
The initial chamber members would be chosen by a group of retired judges that would review the applicants and the selected applicants put in the lottery to become chamber members. As soon as the chamber was filled the group would be disbanded. Each chamber should have 9 members. After the chamber was filled initially the group would remain autonomous. The pay for the chamber positions should be nothing or a per diem to cover expenses.
23. All organizations would pay taxes; no non-profits and religious organizations would be required to pay taxes, no more subsidies.
24. Controlling the entry to the borders has proven to be a failure, therefore we should open the borders and allow people to enter but not support them while they are in resident. In other words they could stay in the country while they worked or had money to support themselves. No subsidies for foreign born.
RODNEY GALLOWAY
1340 H STREET
RAMONA, CA. 92065
760 789 1333
And
2957 silent spring ln.
San jacinto, ca. 92582
951 402 3759
760 666 8685
Thursday, August 12, 2010
UPDATE ON THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION 8-12-2010
UPDATE ON THE CURRENT WARS
12-3-2009
OBAMA has proved that there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, after all the biggest difference was the way each was spelled. The question of how many troops to send was changed from abandonment to adding 30,000 more troops if they can find that many that will act as pawns to the General staff. The question of when to get out of Afghanistan was answered by the military and that is NEVER, we are going to stay FOREVER but we don’t want to call it an occupation, after all the only time the military has left an area they have occupied was when they were kicked out by a government that was not getting enough kickback and became an embarrassment to the country. That is why we have over 700 military bases around the globe and 900 bases here in the USA, they won’t leave after they have established a beach head and we keep paying BIG bucks under the pretence that they are protecting us from whoever, when in fact they have never protected us. Nothing happens as a result of the installations. The question of whether the lives and mutilations was in vain, and the answer is yes just as they were in Viet Nam, Korea, and all the other skirmishes they have been involved in since WWII and that can be questioned. When the goals of the “wars” are determined to be unattainable they change the “goals” and start anew and the gullible public goes along with the mismanagement.
The war with Iran started a few years ago and will be implemented soon so get ready for the invasion. The first part of going to war is the propaganda that convinces the public we “need” to do this invasion. The government has proved time and time again that they are able to convince the public of the need to go to war. The military needs these skirmishes in order to stay in business, that is their business and they are good at it. The last iteration with Afghanistan and Iraq was more difficult to pull off. After the many small bombings, the Cole, Trade Center and other bombings was not enough to stir the “go to war” they used the flying commercial aircraft into the Trade Center and sending a missile into the pentagon was significant and the public was loud in its “need” to go to war, sending in an army to catch ONE man. But they really didn’t want to catch him because they would not have an enemy and the need to proceed would not be justified. Sufficient justification for invading Iraq was put forth and later proved to be lies, but we got Sadam and had the dissident Iraqis execute him, actually a case of murder.
So get ready for the invasion of Iran and maybe later when we have time and more pawns we will try again in Korea.
Our national interest has been to prop up the military industrial establishment, that Eisenhower warned us about and we never implemented that message.
Remember the security of the USA and the safety of the American people will never be secured by a military, especially one that is stationed half way around the world. When you consider the loss of the USA resources and how they could be better spent making improvements to the infrastructure or trying to correct the overspending and national debt, these “wars” are ridiculous.
The latest screw-up by the TSA is to let an armature try and set off a small explosive on a plane headed for Detroit. The knee jerk reaction is to buy full body scanners and look thru everyone’s clothes. With probably a thousand different ways to get explosives on board, each time an armature tries to explode an explosive device the TSA spends a few billion and the “terrorist” only spends $100 and a plane ticket, who wins? The way to get around the body scanners is to wear a skin like patch, such as pig skin over the explosive device and the scanner thinks it is part of the person’s skin. These armature terrorist just have to try these things to keep the USA fearful of the attack. They are TERRORIST, not an army invading the homeland, just enough to remind the public we should get out of the Middle East and we wouldn’t have these problems but the propaganda from the USA is that they want to kill us, with WHAT???.. the effort in the Middle East is fighting tribesmen, “foot soldiers” that want us out of their area and does not want western influence in their country, so how are they going to kill us?? They have yet to use the horse as a means of transportation.(very advanced) and we are stepping up the effort with 100 ton vehicles that are “designed” to withstand the IED the most troublesome weapon developed by these tribal foot soldiers!!
The TSA has been in business for close to 10 years and has yet to find any person that would try and blow up an airplane, a complete loss and the humiliation of the public to be put thru the exercises of the search! Once the bureaucracy has been put in place the terrorist then proceed to a new attack which is easy to do with the inept ability of the government, but the new bureaucracy is now sacred and well entrenched in American aviation.
Occasionally I have to update this writing because of new developments that demonstrate our incompetence in handling foreign affairs.
ROD GALLOWAY Sr
12-3-2009
OBAMA has proved that there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, after all the biggest difference was the way each was spelled. The question of how many troops to send was changed from abandonment to adding 30,000 more troops if they can find that many that will act as pawns to the General staff. The question of when to get out of Afghanistan was answered by the military and that is NEVER, we are going to stay FOREVER but we don’t want to call it an occupation, after all the only time the military has left an area they have occupied was when they were kicked out by a government that was not getting enough kickback and became an embarrassment to the country. That is why we have over 700 military bases around the globe and 900 bases here in the USA, they won’t leave after they have established a beach head and we keep paying BIG bucks under the pretence that they are protecting us from whoever, when in fact they have never protected us. Nothing happens as a result of the installations. The question of whether the lives and mutilations was in vain, and the answer is yes just as they were in Viet Nam, Korea, and all the other skirmishes they have been involved in since WWII and that can be questioned. When the goals of the “wars” are determined to be unattainable they change the “goals” and start anew and the gullible public goes along with the mismanagement.
The war with Iran started a few years ago and will be implemented soon so get ready for the invasion. The first part of going to war is the propaganda that convinces the public we “need” to do this invasion. The government has proved time and time again that they are able to convince the public of the need to go to war. The military needs these skirmishes in order to stay in business, that is their business and they are good at it. The last iteration with Afghanistan and Iraq was more difficult to pull off. After the many small bombings, the Cole, Trade Center and other bombings was not enough to stir the “go to war” they used the flying commercial aircraft into the Trade Center and sending a missile into the pentagon was significant and the public was loud in its “need” to go to war, sending in an army to catch ONE man. But they really didn’t want to catch him because they would not have an enemy and the need to proceed would not be justified. Sufficient justification for invading Iraq was put forth and later proved to be lies, but we got Sadam and had the dissident Iraqis execute him, actually a case of murder.
So get ready for the invasion of Iran and maybe later when we have time and more pawns we will try again in Korea.
Our national interest has been to prop up the military industrial establishment, that Eisenhower warned us about and we never implemented that message.
Remember the security of the USA and the safety of the American people will never be secured by a military, especially one that is stationed half way around the world. When you consider the loss of the USA resources and how they could be better spent making improvements to the infrastructure or trying to correct the overspending and national debt, these “wars” are ridiculous.
The latest screw-up by the TSA is to let an armature try and set off a small explosive on a plane headed for Detroit. The knee jerk reaction is to buy full body scanners and look thru everyone’s clothes. With probably a thousand different ways to get explosives on board, each time an armature tries to explode an explosive device the TSA spends a few billion and the “terrorist” only spends $100 and a plane ticket, who wins? The way to get around the body scanners is to wear a skin like patch, such as pig skin over the explosive device and the scanner thinks it is part of the person’s skin. These armature terrorist just have to try these things to keep the USA fearful of the attack. They are TERRORIST, not an army invading the homeland, just enough to remind the public we should get out of the Middle East and we wouldn’t have these problems but the propaganda from the USA is that they want to kill us, with WHAT???.. the effort in the Middle East is fighting tribesmen, “foot soldiers” that want us out of their area and does not want western influence in their country, so how are they going to kill us?? They have yet to use the horse as a means of transportation.(very advanced) and we are stepping up the effort with 100 ton vehicles that are “designed” to withstand the IED the most troublesome weapon developed by these tribal foot soldiers!!
The TSA has been in business for close to 10 years and has yet to find any person that would try and blow up an airplane, a complete loss and the humiliation of the public to be put thru the exercises of the search! Once the bureaucracy has been put in place the terrorist then proceed to a new attack which is easy to do with the inept ability of the government, but the new bureaucracy is now sacred and well entrenched in American aviation.
Occasionally I have to update this writing because of new developments that demonstrate our incompetence in handling foreign affairs.
ROD GALLOWAY Sr
RELIGION THE BIGGEST FRAUD 8-12-2010
Religion is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the human race
LAST REVISED 7-7-2010
MAN WROTE THE RELIGION OF THE DAY
7-1-2008
The question is what would be left of religion if the influences of man were taken away?? The result of that considered then add the actions of man and what do you have left? The answer to the questions are respectively nothing and chaos. THE POINT IS THAT MAN HAS ALWAYS MADE UP RELIGION when it was necessary to maintain order or to capitalize on the weakness of people. That it turns out to be the biggest scam ever put to mankind in the history of the world.
ALONG WITH SUPERSTITIONS RELIGION IS JUST ANOTHER SUPERSTITION THAT IS A NATURAL NEED FOR THE POPULATION JUST AS THE FACT THAT THE PUBLIC ABIDES BY SUPERSTITIONS AND IT BECOMES PART OF THEIR DAILY LIVES.
I AM A SLOW LEARNER AND I HAVE HAD THIS IDEA SOMEONE SHOULD BE WRITING ABOUT RELIGION AND ITS PLACE IN OUR LIVES AND ABOUT POLITICS AND RELIGION AND IT FINALLY CAME TO ME LIKE “EURIKA”, SO I WRITE ABOUT RELIGION.
THE DOUBLE SPEAK WHICH IS EVERYWHERE SAYS WE SHOULD MAINTAIN A SEPERATION BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND STATE, BUT WHEN YOU LOOK AT ALL THAT GOES ON WITH THE GOVERNMENT YOU FIND THE TWO ARE FIRMLY LOCKED TOGETHER. WE PASS LAWS THAT ARE FROM RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS LIKE SAME SEX MARRIAGES, PROSTITUTION, DRUG LAWS, possession of drugs, POLIGAMY, AGE OF CONSENT, BLUE LAWS, NO TAXING OF CHURCHES, OF COURSE, GOD IN THE PLEDGE, GOD ON THE MONEY, NUDITY, many victimless crimes and many other laws but the list is long and we will never get out from under the power of the church in government.
This is not about any particular church and it is not meant to discourage you about your religion because if that were the case I could be arrested for causing a revolt and I worry about the results when everyone ditched their religion, chaos would be wide spread so I want to reassure you to keep your religion and understand that nothing is going to happen as a result of your thinking.
Man has needed religion since the beginning of time and that is not going to change because of some writings, it is in bread and irreversible.
7-24-2009
Religion is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the human race closely followed by governments and their control of the people. With all respect to my bible beating friends we must at some time GET REAL or in other words face up to reality and quit living in a fantasy world. The human race has come a long way since the “beginning”. Today after billions of years of the universe development and after 2000 years of recent human development people still use writings that were done at the beginning of the written history, at least at a time when something was written and used those writings to determine the way life should be lived today. Written by someone with little education and if they were writing today no one would pay any attention to what they had written. At that time there was no science and no rules or laws to live by, ignorance was everywhere, they thought the world was flat and even today people still think the world is flat, chaos was everywhere and the people needed a god to “protect” them and answer questions about the afterlife, so they wrote one into the documents of the day, one guy had the rules written in stone (only 10 rules) according to the bible and he forgot to put in the most important rule for living and that is “DO NO HARM TO OTHERS”, the world today would be much better off with that rule, today the people still have the same needs; the people that could write probably ruled the masses and the writings were the laws of the land and all they had to do was say that god directed the writings and who could prove them wrong? God existed in many of the writings, doing all kinds of supernatural things but since that time the God has become very quiet for some reason. In large populations something had to be done to control the masses and writing on paper was all that was necessary to become the law of the land. Even today when this country was founded we had no laws and since the governments were formed the politicians have written thousands of laws on a yearly basis to control and limit the freedoms of the people. At that time all the people that had migrated to the country were trying to escape religious persecution so all were religious and God was written into the documents of the day. The founding fathers were Deist, they believed there was a god but avoided the Christian religion and a feeble attempt to keep religion out of the government was not solid enough and today the religion is everywhere in the government. “In God we trust” was even printed on buildings and the money, but what could you expect all were deeply religious. Back then things that were written was stories and the gods, even the stories about Jesus was written about other gods with the Egyptians and the god Horus and many other times about gods in the middle East, all had the same life style as Jesus but occurred many years prior to the time of the so called Jesus. So the Christian religions copied the ancient religions and wrote Jesus in as the current GOD.
This countries constitution assumes a separation of religion and the state but the religious lawmakers keep wedging religion into the thousands of laws they write each year, both federal and state. Examples are the control of women’s bodies, abortion, prostitution, marriage, homosexual behavior, treatment of crimes, they don’t know how to correct people’s behavior so they use archaic means and put people that disobey the laws in prison and the death penalty, they quit burning offenders at the stake for being witches, I wonder why? Fact is they do not know how to correct human behavior when the perpetrator disobeys the “laws of the land”.
We are deceived by many writings, laws, traditions, and the result is “double speak” where we are told one thing and they do another. Like the police are supposed to “protect” us but in fact they don’t protect, the fire department is supposed to put out fires but the structure or wild fires simply burn themselves out and they pour good water on the embers. We preach that the military protects the country but the fact is they have never protected this country, except during the revolutionary war with Great Briton, they are usually fighting in some other country but we have little to fear for this country is well protected by our large borders and no country would try and invade. Don’t forget “we have nothing to fear but fear itself”, good line by Winston.
We preach peace, but we have started or engaged in more wars than any country, killing more people even our own soldiers and destroying infrastructure in other countries with money that we borrow from the communist Chinese, Communism which we have all been brainwashed into believing was BAD and now they own us. We are deceived in many ways thru brainwashing, double speaking
As best that you can tell religion and governments don’t mix well as the founders thought, after all that is why they came to this country to escape the religious persecution by the government in those European countries. The founders were deist a belief in God based on reason rather than revelation and involving the view that God has set the universe in motion but does not interfere with how it runs. Deism was especially influential in the 17th and 18th centuries. They believed a god created all but that is as far as they believed.
Man has always needed a “god” and all civilizations have had at least one. Man has an inbred need to have a life after death and a need to avoid what really happens to the person after death. Reality is a state to be avoided and mankind has elected to live in an artificial, supernatural, fantasy lifestyle and the writings of the bible or the Koran and other descriptions of religious lifestyles that provide the guidance for that lifestyle. People blindly follow the writings and demand others do the same.
The purveyors of these ancient writings are today’s preachers that use all the media to assure you are touched and fearful if you do not conform and accept the religion they put forth. The media is of course the churches where the participants can gather in a very social atmosphere. You are captured by the rigorous rituals that they have invented to pull you into the “flock”. The other media is the radio, television, the songs they sing are very enticing and the atmosphere is very conducive to your meditating and the feeling of relief when the services are over. Bach was well trained in writing religious music that still exists today. That is what he did for a living and each week he would come up with another composition; the church supported his large family for a long time.
The repetitious preaching, week to week, is a routine for brainwashing the individual to be a real believer, along with the icons and music, it is all very enticing and the inductive person is captured in the mood of the day. After all look at all the people, friends, relatives and people you don’t even know that take up the teachings for FACT. The churches start early during childhood to indoctrinate the child about religion and puts the fear of Hell into his brain to convince him that religion is a necessary way of life.
Being “born again” is a famous expression that a convert feels after becoming overwhelmed with the religious experience. These motivational speakers that inspire the public are similar to the carnival barker or a television salesman selling vacuum cleaners. They are the spiritual authority and they are responsible for leading the pack. They promise life after death even when they have no more proof of that event than the writer that dreamed it up and wrote it down years ago. They can also assure you that if you don’t “believe” your sole will rest in hell and you must be within the religion that they preach and not a follower of another religion. The Muslim religion does not allow switching religious beliefs and they will execute the person that exercises that right. Most of the wars are fought over religious beliefs that say our religion is the true religion and anyone that does not believe that is wrong.
The churches are adorned with various religious icons and in some cases idols that are an artist rendering of a character in the bible. The idols are “prayed” to as if they were the God. Some churches have “holy” water that the preacher has blessed and that makes it holy. The churches are very ornate and a standout in the community but remember they pay no taxes and they level a tax on the participants, normally 10% of your gross salary in order to pay for the cost of maintaining the church, including the salaries of the people employed by the church.
The public is very susceptible to scams and there are many people that are smart enough to initiate the scams, just watch the television and radio that the public listens to including religion which blast away 7/24 sending the word of the “gospel” to the people in need and in like kind the people send in money to keep the messages coming, so it is a self fulfilling prophecy. The public is not educated well enough to avoid the scams and until it is no longer profitable for the scammers to exist we will need more and better education.
PONZI SCHEMES
Ponzi schemes are a popular for separating money from the public. The scheme is to promise something in return that is better than anything they would normally get and of course the promises could never be met, but people are both gullible and greedy. With that combination they are bound to appeal to a large amount of people. The end result is the investment falls flat and does not produce the results promised. The churches use the same technique to support the ongoing effort to win more people so they can collect more with the end goal of having a life after death in a heaven that someone invented many years ago because of the weakness in the human physic and the fact that man was very much in need of knowing what was going to happen after death, the biggest mystery. The Muslim religion promises sex after death with virgins, a wish that should never be put on the human being. Better to have an experienced woman that would be more pleasureful but that appeals to the masses. Ponzi probably got the idea from the religious community, which demonstrates the gullibility of the public on a daily basis.
Other religions are more realistic like the buddist that try and live the life after the teachings of Budda. Buddhism
Buddhism's core beliefs
BUDDA sat under the fig tree and contemplated how life should be and that is how the religion came to be. It has since been embellished by the leaders of that church and today the following is how the core of the religion is practiced.
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Core beliefs of Buddhism:
Buddhism, like most of the great religions of the world, is divided into a number of different traditions. However, most traditions share a common set of fundamental beliefs.
One fundamental belief of Buddhism is often referred to as reincarnation -- the concept that people are reborn after dying. In fact, most individuals go through many cycles of birth, living, death and rebirth. A practicing Buddhist differentiates between the concepts of rebirth and reincarnation. In reincarnation, the individual may recur repeatedly. In rebirth, a person does not necessarily return to Earth as the same entity ever again. He compares it to a leaf growing on a tree. When the withering leaf falls off, a new leaf will eventually replace it. It is similar to the old leaf, but it is not identical to the original leaf.
After many such cycles, if a person releases their attachment to desire and the self, they can attain Nirvana. This is a state of liberation and freedom from suffering.
The Three Trainings or Practices:
These three consist of:
Sila: Virtue, good conduct, morality. This is based on two fundamental principles:
The principle of equality: that all living entities are equal.
The principle of reciprocity: This is the "Golden Rule" inChristianity -- to do onto others as you would wish them to do onto you. It is found in all major religions.
Samadhi: Concentration, meditation, mental development. Developing one's mind is the path to wisdom which in turn leads to personal freedom. Mental development also strengthens and controls our mind; this helps us maintain good conduct.
Prajna: Discernment, insight, wisdom, enlightenment. This is the real heart of Buddhism. Wisdom will emerge if your mind is pure and calm.
The first two paths listed in the Eightfold Path, described below, refer to discernment; the last three belong to concentration; the middle three are related to virtue.
The Four Noble Truths:
The Buddha's Four Noble Truths explore human suffering. They may be described (somewhat simplistically) as:
Dukkha: Suffering exists: (Suffering is real and almost universal. Suffering has many causes: loss, sickness, pain, failure, the impermanence of pleasure.)
Samudaya: There is a cause for suffering. (It is the desire to have and control things. It can take many forms: craving of sensual pleasures; the desire for fame; the desire to avoid unpleasant sensations, like fear, anger or jealousy.)
Nirodha: There is an end to suffering. (Suffering ceases with the final liberation of Nirvana (a.k.a. Nibbana). The mind experiences complete freedom, liberation and non-attachment. It lets go of any desire or craving.)
Magga: In order to end suffering, you must follow the Eightfold Path.
The Five Precepts:
These are rules to live by. They are somewhat analogous to the second half of the Ten Commandments in Judaism and Christianity -- that part of the Decalogue which describes behaviors to avoid. However, they are recommendations, not commandments. Believers are expected to use their own intelligence in deciding exactly how to apply these rules.
Do not kill. This is sometimes translated as "not harming" or an absence of violence.
Do not steal. This is generally interpreted as including the avoidance of fraud and economic exploitation.
Do not lie. This is sometimes interpreted as including name calling, gossip, etc.
Do not misuse sex. For monks and nuns, this means any departure from complete celibacy. For the laity, adultery is forbidden, along with any sexual harassment or exploitation, including that within marriage. The Buddha did not discuss consensual premarital sex within a committed relationship; Thus, Buddhist traditions differ on this. Most Buddhists, probably influenced by their local cultures, condemn same-sex sexual activity regardless of the nature of the relationship between the people involved.
Do not consume alcohol or other drugs. The main concern here is that intoxicants cloud the mind. Some have included as a drug other methods of divorcing ourselves from reality -- e.g. movies, television, the Internet. 1
Those preparing for monastic life or who are not within a family are expected to avoid an additional five activities:
6. Taking untimely meals. 7. Dancing, singing, music, watching grotesque mime. 8. Use of garlands, perfumes and personal adornment. 9. Use of high seats.10. Accepting gold or silver.
There is also a series of eight precepts which are composed of the first seven listed above, followed by the eighth and ninth combined as one. "Ordained Theravada monks promise to follow 227 precepts!" 3
The Eightfold Path:
The Buddha's Eightfold Path consists of:
Panna: Discernment, wisdom:
1) Samma ditthi Right Understanding of the Four Noble Truths
2) Samma sankappa: Right thinking; following the right path in life
Sila: Virtue, morality:
3) Samma vaca: Right speech: no lying, criticism, condemning, gossip, harsh language
4) Samma kammanta Right conduct by following the Five Precepts
5) Samma ajiva: Right livelihood; support yourself without harming others
Samadhi: Concentration, meditation:
6) Samma vayama Right Effort: promote good thoughts; conquer evil thoughts
7) Samma sati Right Mindfulness: Become aware of your body, mind and feelings
8) Samma samadhi Right Concentration: Meditate to achieve a higher state of consciousness
References:
Guy Newland, Untitled essay at: http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/
Bhikkhu Bodhi, "The Noble Eightfold Path. The Way to the End of Suffering," Buddhist Information, at: http://www.buddhistinformation.com/
Thomas Knierim, "The Precepts" at: http://www.thebigview.com/
Copyright © 1996 to 2009 by Ontario Consultants on Religious ToleranceLatest update: 2009-AUG-16Author: B.A. Robinson
The church is very influential in the politics of the country, any country, and they lobby for laws that they think the population should follow. These laws usually restrict the population in many areas. Typically laws that concern abortion, marriage, holidays, prostitution, child pornography, alcohol, consumption and the days it can be sold, nudity and other laws too numerous to mention here. They do not think the individual can determine how to use their body and they want to control how the body is used regardless of a victimless crime.
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This blind following has resulted in the way we make our laws and morals, the majority rules and it is difficult to change the way things are done especially when the majority have been driven by the rules of the religion.
Once the public mentality accepts the ways of religion other irrational things show up that affect governments, we continue to have a deficit and borrow from countries that are more financially able to handle their finances than we are and most are Communist, Muslim and others. The bottom line is that we are stealing from the lenders with the false promise that we will repay the loans. With the direction this country is going and no plans to repay the loans we will default soon and become bankrupt. The politicians know they are only in office for a short time and do not have to account for deficit spending. We never seem to justify the expenditures and when we do it is acceptable to the masses because of the propaganda that is put out by the agency under consideration.
The military “needs” to fight wars and the people agree with the propaganda that enables the military to spend vast amounts of money doing practically nothing but under the guise of “protecting our freedom” when our freedom was never under attack. The propaganda was slanted towards “our freedom was under attack and they want to kill us” and the gullible accepted it without question. The foot soldier (the pawn of the generals) blindly follows the orders and gives his life for patriotism and all the other reasons he may have to join the military, money for the financial rewards are much higher today and the false idea that they are a volunteer military which puts them in a mercenary category, and maybe for just a simple reason to go and shoot someone. They can break the laws of the USA in foreign countries and not be prosecuted. Committing murder is a common thing during “war”. War crimes are seldom punished especially when we are the ones doing the criminal acts. The CIA was established especially so we had an organization the could act with impunity and do the biding of the government under the umbrella established that the CIA was not accountable for its actions. As a result they assonate, start wars and whatever is required regardless of the laws of the land. After all we are a nation that rules by law!!
When the terrorist attack because we have infiltrated their land and try to spread Democracy and we call it a WAR. Terrorist does not invade other countries they are merely political organizations that use bombs to elaborate their point rather than voting. But we like to make war and that has turned out to be a good excuse for starting the wars. They want us out of their land and stop supporting Israel, so are you going to start a war and spend American lives and trillions of dollars in a futile attempt to TRY and stop that political outcome??
The propaganda effort seems to be we will do something like invade other countries and condemn others for terrorizing our country??
Other bureaucracies use the same type of propaganda to justify their existence; the police always indicate they are “protecting” the public when they have never been able to protect you. You must protect yourself and having a concealed weapon may be the best protection if the person that is about to commit bodily harm, he should know that you may be carrying a gun or something else to defend yourself. That is protection. The police force along with the fire department is reactionary groups that respond after the fact that a crime has been committed. They do FAIR work apprehending criminals after the public has identified or fingered the suspect but many get away. Part of the propaganda is how the crime rate has decreased because of their efforts, when they have nothing to do with most crimes, murder, robbery, physical abuse, traffic laws, and prostitution and on and on. Remember they are well armed and when they decide to shoot you they use many rounds to perform the act. The reasons for shooting you are that they fear for their life when everyone knows that everyone should fear for their life when they venture onto the streets and they are always justified in the shootings by the bureaucracy that they are a part of. Once a person is apprehended and convicted he needs to admit remorse for some reason but the courts need to hear the remorse statement and crying is effective and the defense lawyer must be able to teach the defendant how to be remorseful.
Illogical conditions exist with laws about prostitution, immigration, drugs, marriage, controls on the personal body, abortion, death, and how to treat “criminals”.
Punishment is an archaic method because we don’t know how to handle the people that commit “crimes” so the old technique is to put them in jail. No attempt is made to correct the situation which may be an easy thing to do but jail is an easier way to handle the “law” breakers. Similar to burning at the stake for “witches”. And after the jails are filled and resources are gone they let the “non-violent” offenders go free, real smart and still no way to correct the real problem. We are a “nation of laws” and we cannot enforce the laws.
Today when budgets are threatened because of the “poor economy” governments that is inept and not capable of proper governing lay off the blame to others and never take responsibility for their ineptness.
This country is a great country and the only regret is that it could have been much greater if we had spent our resources better and really protected the public.
This is not just Christianity but all religions from the religions of the aborigines thru Islam and Christianity. Mankind has a weakness in the makeup of the human character that causes him to want to avoid reality and develop a faith in the supernatural from which you cannot demonstrate any realistic evidence. Religion promises a life after death that is unrealistic and no evidence was ever established to show the promises to be true, just faith. Now we have some proof that the deranged, mentally handicapped president Bush started the war with Iraq because God told him to invade. This caused thousands to be killed and maimed but has given the military a lead into a perpetual war along with the civilian corps (camp followers) that supports the war.
These superstitions have caused many faults in the world especially different religions that think they are the one true religion which has caused wars and people killing and discriminating against people of color or people that are “different” than me. Of all the superstitions only religion is the most destructive and represents a failure of the human to have peace, justice, and human rights. All of the things the “religions” profess to achieve. These different religions argue that they are the true religion when in fact neither have a basis in reality and the fight produced nothing, for how could you prove you are the one true religion when you don’t have a realistic reason for fact.
Superstitions cause humans to avoid reality and make bad laws that are unrealistic and cause man to condemn others and put them in prison and execute them for not living up to the artificial, arbitrary standards they have established. It is also a way to create bureaucracies, make a law that satisfies a lobbyist and then generate a bureaucracy that enforces that law. A great example of this is to create immigration laws that refuse to let seasonal workers (IN THE 50’s THE BRACERO PROGAM WORKED VERY WELL AND EVERYONE ACCEPTED IT) from foreign lands enter the country to do the necessary work and then have the border patrol arrest them when they come across the border "illegally" and put them in jail. This satisfies the border patrol and prison bureaucracies. Economics governs and trumps the unrealistic laws generated by lobbyist and the government. The immigration laws are apparently made to protect the American worker from foreign workers that are willing to do the work even when the American worker refuses to do the work so the farmer suffers from lack of labor to work the crops. The public has got so enthralled with the law that they will do anything to support the law, while refusing to obey other laws, another way of choosing racism as a way to downgrade the Mexican or foreign worker.
An example of how ridiculous the laws can be is driving traffic laws. Exceeding the speed limit never caused an accident BUT when coupled with an incompetent, irrational, irresponsible driver at any speed safety is jeopardized and collisions happen all the time, not because of speeding but because of the irresponsible driver at any speed. The laws are for exceeding the arbitrary limits and tickets that accompany fines are leveled by the police that have nothing to do with the REAL problem, the irresponsible driver. Problem is that it is nearly impossible to determine when a person will become irresponsible until after the fact they have caused an accident. So they write laws that do not answer the real problem and just result in revenue to the government. We lose two ways, the cost of the police and the fact they do nothing to curb the lawbreaker.
Stop signs are another irrational law that says you must come to a complete stop before proceeding. Years ago the traffic laws were quite different. The driver was supposed to be safe and sane. And that caused people to roll through the stop signs when they knew it was SAFE to proceed, the person on the right had the right of way when both arrived at the stop at the same time. Today the government gives tickets for not coming to a complete stop, regardless of the safety involved. Rolling thru the stop sign was given the name “a California stop”. As a result of these irrational laws that generate revenue and do nothing for driver’s safety many other laws are written that limit the freedom of the individual and generate large sums of money and do nothing for safety. The Highway Patrol (CHP) are responsible for generating tickets for traffic violations and will never come close to actually correcting the problem of the irresponsible driver and the effort is an expense that they cannot overcome with the tickets they generate. As they are writing the ticket thousands of people drive by exceeding the speed limit. People drive at the speed they think is safe regardless of the “limit” put out by the arbitrary limit the state thinks law should be enforced.
Laws that are written for the religious view are laws about marriage, homosexual behavior, which turns out to be homophobic, nudity, gambling, drinking alcohol, blue laws, given tax free benefits, prostitution, abortion, drugs the public uses drugs to escape reality much as they use religion, victimless crimes where no one was hurt as a result of your actions, just showing up at a venue could put you in jail, possession of drugs and/or drug parafanailia, the laws about liquor reaches to the point that having a drink can put you in jail, and today the law reaches into the bedroom, having child porn (whatever that is can cause you to be arrested and labeled a sex offender for the rest of your life) on your computer regardless of how it got in the machine, action against animals, the list goes on and on along with laws that don’t seem to be from a religious standpoint but always from the viewpoint that they want to control your every move. They want to control how you use your body. And above all we are supposed to separate the church from the government. God bless America and in God we trust did not happen, God did not bless this country but they keep saying those words, in the pledge of allegiance to the flag “one nation under God with liberty and justice for all” did not happen and is a lie, but they gloss over those facts and continue to repeat the lies. We should be a secular society and that would be the perfect role for government but the church is too deeply woven into the government. The patriotic songs stir up needs to be patriotic. The brainwashing that is used is to repeat the lines and sooner than later people will think it is true. The same technique happens in the churches around the world, keep telling the same story over and over and the people will soon believe it really happened. The bible stories happened over many years but the religion has put the happenings in the bible on a yearly basis. Each year on certain selected dates we celebrate a happening in the bible, Easter, Christmas, and then we add other patriotic days and Mothers and fathers days along with new years and Saint Pats day and the vendors sell on each of those days, something for the economy. Finally the idea is to keep repeating those events and the public will think they are real and think they really happened. Just more brainwashing.
We sentence people to arbitrary terms in different states for similar crimes. The federal crimes tend to be consistent but they are so smart they will sentence convicts to two life sentences served consecutively when the person is only expected to live less than ten years. Now the prisons are filled and the courts are demanding the release of prisoners that they have sentenced to jail because of overcrowding. (REAL SMART) The courts are so backlogged that civil cases are not given time in the courtroom. There is now some consideration for early release of “non-violent” criminals and some thoughts of really trying to rehabilitate the “criminal” which is a much better approach than lock them up and forget. Progress may still find a way in the illogical approaches of the past, but we have been doing this for hundreds of years.
We are introduced with superstitions practically from birth. The tooth fairy, Santa Clause, Easter bunny, and many others from other religions, all tilted to keep you close to believing the superstitions and finally about God, Heaven (for a life after death), hell, the devil and on and on. Then morals are introduced and rules to live by that were derived from ancient writings and enhanced and embellished by the leaders of the religions of the day. As a result of those teachings, laws are made that keep the populations on the straight and narrow. They are written by people that have greed and benefits to gain as a result under the guise of “protecting” the public. The result is usually a prison sentence or death. The sentences are arbitrary and do not correct the underlying problem.
These leaders of the religions are very good at convincing the public about the horrors of not following their direction. They use iconic methods, churches, and statutes, special clothing that supports their teachings. The religions then create iconic representations of these religious icons and sell the icons to the public another way they take money from the public. They are always in need of money to support various efforts that are godly ventures. Without paying taxes because they are exempt by the government that supports the religion they have amassed fortunes and continue to grow and influence the government. When the government subsidies the religion that makes them a part of and subservient to the government.
Other religions also depend on the supernatural, by teaching people about various after life benefits like being reborn as an animal or insect, called reincarnation and the Muslims that offer a life after death that is so attractive they commit suicide for the religion.
We make laws that we cannot enforce, hire police to enforce the laws, we lose two times. The police and fire departments think they control crime, but they are reactionary departments that react only when a crime has been committed and usually the citizens are responsible for fingering the culprit but the police take the benefit of finding the culprit. The fire department goes to fires that are well started and usually watch as the building burns to the ground along with tons of water that is poured on and does no good. Think volunteer fire departments and insurance which most owners have in order to rebuild the structure. Defensible space and let it burn, most efforts to “contain” a grass or wild fire is to watch and let it burn out. Sometimes structures are saved by the owners and the fire department but hardly worth the cost of the department and large aircraft that drop water and “retardant” and the fire burns thru the effort. You never hear commentators talk about kindling temperatures, but the aircraft continue to drop water and retardants only to have them turn into a mist and do little to reduce the kindling temperature and the fire continues to burn.
Seems we have the idea when something sounds derogatory to us we make a law against the idea and think it will go away.
We make laws about immigration that cannot be enforced and then complain about the fact that people break the laws and call them illegal’s, when in fact ALL people break the existing unenforceable laws on a daily basis and they do not call themselves illegal’s. So is it just another discrimination thing against the “illegals”? Seems so. They want the work we need the work done and we arrest them for entering the country to do the required work.
Many other “laws” are written that cause the police to chase their tails, such as traffic, prostitution (the oldest profession), people that need drugs are arrested for possession when these laws are driven by economics and will never be satisfied by the police but merely another bureaucracy that will always be used by the police to justify their existence. Most countries are legalizing the possession of small amounts of drugs; now the police will have to carry around a device to weigh drugs. We are making progress and that is to decriminalize possession laws, maybe in our lifetime. That will relieve the crowding of the prison population and relieve the courts, and give the police an opportunity to look after the really bad guys that do harm to others, which is what the real reason for having a police force.
Many items that are unlawful are and have to do with the human characteristic, over the ages the human developed characteristics that prevail today but a few people have decided that is not what “our” morals are supposed to be and a law is written to counter the human characteristic. A good point is that back in the recent history and in some countries today women were married when they started to menstruate or when they were able to bear a child and that was the norm. (See note at the end of this writing) Why would nature allow childbearing at that age if it was not OK? Today that action would land you in jail and label you as a sex offender for the rest of your life. Laws never allow a time for trying to correct the desire to impregnate the 12-13 year old; the only way they have to handle the problem is to put the offender in jail, which does nothing to solve the problem. Mutual consent is not a consideration. Brain washing, a technique used during the Korean War could be used to correct the problem. Multiple marriages long practiced by many people around the world are outlawed in this country but the practice goes on in many areas of the country and no harm is done but once a person is condemned for having more than one wife he is put in prison and no longer can provide for his family. Years ago and in many parts of the world multiple marriages was the norm. When two people want to get married they must be male and female, nothing happens when same sex mates want to get married except the Christians in this country think it is not right. Again NOTHING happens when the same sex marriage takes place but we have laws that prohibit the ceremony.
The legislatures write thousands of laws each year that limit and remove our freedoms. When the huge bureaucracy, the military starts a war based on propaganda that is finally “to protect our freedom” the people really think they are doing a good job, (support the military) but in fact they are just doing what they are trained for and that is to make war and the propaganda is to assure the public they are engaged to “protect our freedom”. The “new” volunteer military is formed by awarding the enlistee money ($40,000) and then teaching him to go shoot someone which he may already be ready to do or have a death wish which the military brass uses to recruit and then awarding large re-enlistment bonuses and you finally have a mercenary military and they want to maintain that status so it is necessary to continue the wars perpetually. The new recruit becomes a pawn in the military hierarchy that enables them to maintain a perpetual war. After he has had a good taste of what the military is about and the memory of shooting another human being they come home with P.T.S.S called Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, a condition that they cultivate and cause them to continue with useless lives and a burden to society. When they lose another war nothing changes except to mourn the lost lives of the military that the war consumed. Seems like when they lose the war we should lose some freedom but the most we lose is the war dead and maimed along with the huge costs of fighting the war that produced nothing. Today the military has decided after 8-9 years of shooting people in Afghanistan that they are losing the war and have decided to change the tactic so they can continue the campaign in that country. Remember when you are losing the argument the best strategy is to change the subject. Many past “insurgents” (Russians, British) into Afghanistan have left after not being able to effectively secure the country and rather than reading “lessons learned” and reading history we have to waste resources and lives to learn a new lesson. Today we are going to try and “protect” the Afghan people and a new agenda to spread Democracy, which in this country has degraded to a Plutocracy. (Nice thought, good luck) if we could do that it would be a nice thought but again we would gain nothing, but that is what we usually get for the military efforts. We should redirect those efforts to building railroads, flood control, electric automobiles and other infrastructures that would benefit the USA and the world.
We have never lost any freedoms as a result of loosing wars and never will, anyone that thinks they could occupy this country would be a complete idiot, history shows no one has ever tried, all we have to do is wait and the government along with religion will succeed in destroying the country and then who knows what will happen. But in order to perpetuate the militaristic within the country we need to spread fear to the American public that we are being attacked like the “Drums of War”.
The drug wars is another huge chase your tail exercise that rewards the “police” with a job but does nothing in correcting the problem, a public that cannot face the realistic world and seek mechanisms that allow them to escape realism. But it does provide employment for a large number of people that essentially never accomplish anything except making a few arrests and collecting the “illegal” drugs but the need trumps the law and the chase goes on.
The most recent boondoggle is the forming the huge bureaucracy the Transportation Security Agency which has now been in existence for close to 10 years and has yet to find a terrorist but millions of people every day are “inspected” before being allowed on the airlines. After someone has bypassed the TSA and found on the aircraft with a mostly harmless “bomb” the TSA starts a new program to intercept that kind of breach. The result is the effort is never replicated and they continue to chase their tails, a profession that is gaining support in many governmental bureaucracies.
A good place to add that most bureaucracies are dictatorial and do not report to the public in this “democracy”.
When it comes to spending “other people’s money” the government does that with exuberance. NASA our space GURU has assured that bureaucracy will live forever. When programs run lean and they cannot think of some good way to spend the taxpayer’s money they come up with ideas that are impractical and border on the impossible in order to perpetuate the organization and promote science. Going to the moon was an exercise that produced nothing and the thought of going again is a ridiculous idea. Couple that with the hair brained idea by D.F.G. Bush of going to Mars and you have a country that is currently bankrupt and borrowing money from the “Communist” Chinese government and others willing to throw away the future of our children because of ideas like, “I want to be a wartime president”, “spreading Democracy”, “protecting the American people” and on and on. Soon the interest on the debt will exceed the income and we won’t be able to pay the interest and will have to find someone to borrow the money from in order to pay just the interest and don’t even think about paying the trillions of principal debt.
There seems to be a bright side and that is the attendance at churches is declining in the better-educated areas of the USA.
The politicians in this country always seem to be “good” religious people and preach all the “good” they will bring to the office they are seeking but invariably they use the office to promote their own personal agenda and many times they break the laws they have vowed to uphold and have to be removed from the office either by elections or by impeachment. We have long hoped for honesty in public office and too many times been derailed and fallen into the pit of disrespect.
Is this a great country or what?? We have plenty of room for improvement but probably not in this lifetime. Maybe a revolution would correct the problem?
Write about DRUG WARS, CORRUPT POLITICIANS,
ROD
[Cool Teen Sites]
The Crazy-Quilt of Our Age of Consent Laws by Jonathan Dolhenty, Ph.D.
Copyright 1998 by The Center for Applied Philosophy, Sixes, Oregon. Originally appeared on The Radical Academy website and reproduced with permission. Dr. Dolhenty is executive director of The Center for Applied Philosophy.
Few people seem to be aware of the crazy quilt of our laws regarding the age of consent for sexual activity. Even fewer people seem to know anything about the historical background of the consent laws.The common law, from which America gets much of its precedents in the legal field, set the age of consent at age ten. In other words, participating in sexual activity with someone above the age of ten did not result in the crime of "statutory" rape or child molesting. The activity may have come under other statutory or informal social regulations, but anyone over the age of ten could consent to a sexual activity.During the latter part of the last century and the early part of the present one, attitudes towards sexual activity began to change in America and so did attitudes toward the age of consent. Californiawas one of the first states to raise the age of consent. It raised it from ten to fourteen in 1889 and then from fourteen to sixteen in 1897. Then, in 1913, California again raised it from sixteen to eighteen.A number of other states then joined the bandwagon and raised the age of consent including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New York, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Tennessee went the furthest: under Tennessee law, it was a felony to have sex with any woman under twenty-one.Under the new statutes the age of the male made no difference. If two sixteen year olds got involved in sexual activity, the boy was guilty of rape and the girl was officially an innocent victim. It was legally the same regardless of whether she was, in fact, an innocent victim or awilling and eager partner in "crime." The laws made teenage sex a serious crime for the males. It was a crime to take a woman's chastity, even if she gave it away. It was age discriminationat its best. The age of consent laws have never made any sense. The variances among the individual states are enormous and what would pass as a willing, consensual sexual encounter in one state is a serious crime with severe penalties in another.When I was a police officer, I was involved in a situation that illustrates the problem. The state in which I worked had the age of consent at eighteen. While I and another officer were on patrol oneFriday night, we made a pass through one of the local parks. We spotted an automobile parked in the middle of one of the single lanes that roamed throughout the park. The car, in fact, was blocking the roadway. We got out of the patrol car and approached the offending vehicle. We peered through the windows and spotted a couple in the back seat, naked as jaybirds, engaged in a sexual act. We tapped our flashlights on the back window, scaring the devil out of the occupants.We managed to convince the couple to get some clothes on and step out of the car. Since the couple looked rather young, we demanded some identification. The driver licenses they produced showed that they were from the next town, the boy was seventeen years old and the girl was eighteen. The girl was of legal age, and could give consent to the activity. The boy was underage, technically a "child," and could not give legal consent.In an interesting twist on a common situation, the boy was the "victim" in this case and the girl could be charged with anything from "statutory" rape to child molesting. She would be a sex offender andbe so marked for the rest of her life. She would have to register as a sex offender with the police department of any city she moved to throughout the state. In short, her life would be miserable. This would be so even though they both were in the same class in high school and had a boy-friend-girl-friend relationship.Neither the other police officer nor I could see us branding this girl as a rapist or child molester. The boy had been a willing "victim" even though the law said he couldn't give consent. Had they been married, which they could have been under the law, the act they wereengaging in would have been none of the police's business (except for the fact they were doing it in a public place). The boy could legally quit school (the age of consent for that was sixteen). The boy could legally enter the Marine Corps and defend his country in time of war (the age for that was seventeen with parental approval). He could, in short, have died for his country, but he was a "child" as far as the law was concerned and could not legally engage in sexual activity.So what did we do? My fellow officer and I gave the couple a traditional lecture on the dangers of what they were doing and particularly doing it in what constituted a public place. We put intothem what "fear of hell" we could and let them go home. That was the sensible thing to do. The information in this article and the graphs is assumed to be accurate as of 1995. The sources used to obtain the information are:The World Almanac, 1995;
Lawrence M. Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History (Basic Books, 1993); Peter McWilliams, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do (Prelude Press, 1993).Look at the age of consent for the state of New Mexico in the chart on the left below. 13! Does this mean the kids who live in New Mexico are much more mature and intelligent than the kids in the other states of our nation?I wonder why the kids in some states are considered mature enough to make decisions but in other states they are not? If a kid goes from Wisconsin to New Mexico, does he or she get "instant" maturity? If a boy or girl goes from New Mexico to Wisconsin, do they "instantly"become immature?Does any of this make sense? The graph at the right below gives the ages at which people can get married in the United States.There are some interesting things one finds in analyzing the graph: The boys and girls in California must be smarter and more mature than other kids in the country since they can get married at any age with parental consent.The kids in Hawaii must be considered more mature than other kids in the nation since they can get married at 16 without parental consent. Notice that a girl in Massachusetts can get married at 12 with parental consent and in New Hampshire at age 13. But in New Hampshire, she can't consent to sexual activity until she is 18. Does this mean she can't consent to sex even though she is married under the age of 18?In Mississippi, the boy must be 17 and the girl 15 to get married with parental consent. Isn't this age discrimination in violation of the civil rights laws?
EDITOR NOTE: The following chart appeared with the original article and is presented here for completeness. However, the most accurate information on the various ages of sexual consent are at http://www.ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm
E EVOLUTION, INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND TRANSPLANTATION
2-23-2006
Leave it to my grandson to ask me the “good” questions; they are the ones you either don’t know the answer to or thought no one would ever ask. Anyway the question was if I knew what the “Drake Equation” was? I had never heard about it so he told me generally what it was and after a Google and a Wikipedia.com the following results were shown:
The Drake equation states that:
Where:
N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which we might expect to be able to communicate
And
R* is the rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars which have planets
ne is average number of planets which can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl is the fraction of the above which actually go on to develop life
fi is the fraction of the above which actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc is the fraction of the above which are willing and able to communicate
L is the expected lifetime of such a civilization
This is just the number of civilizations that could be calculated by estimating (guessing) the seven variables in the equation and it seems likely it could be used for any galaxy.
Having just read in National Geographic analysis about how the earth’s civilization migrated from Africa about 200,000 years ago to the landmasses in the world it reminded me about the argument between Darwin’s theory of evolution and the intelligent design idea that has been put forth by the Christians in order to cover up their long held belief that the universe was only 5000 years old and everything was created in seven days. It always seemed to me a stretch to believe we evolved from a single celled “bug” or “animal”. There should be little doubt that since man has been on earth a giant evolution has taken place with man and it goes on today. Darwin also proved that the animals of the Galapagos evolved because of the changing environment. That proof leads others and Darwin to theorize that man evolved from a natural chemical process. Not wanting to believe we evolved from apes the Christians and others held to the writings of the Bible and finally to intelligent design after finding it difficult to explain the 5000 year theory.
An equally difficult to explain idea is that the entire living things on earth were transplanted here by extra-terrestrials. Don’t laugh it just as believable as the other theories, which can’t be proved. There is evidence that man has existed here on earth in some form for about 200,000 years ago which gives a starting point along with evidence that the earth is maybe 4.5 million years old. Suppose other civilizations could have existed a million years prior to them transplanting life on this planet it very likely they could have developed means to travel vast distances and had the technology to do the transplant knowing that evolution would take place and a new society would emerge with new characteristic. If the transplant was a common village they knew that thru mutations different races would evolve. There must have been more than one set of humans because with what we know today the inter breeding of relatives creates a weak line of humans, but that could have happened. Before the transplanting of humans the planet had to be prepared for the human to survive so a long time before man was transplanted all the vegetation had to be transplanted and then the animals transplanted and had to mature to the point that man and animal could survive.
Sound like a fairy tale well this theory is just as factual as the others because none of them can be proven and it is all speculation as how it all happened. Finally if the extra-terrestrials did the transplant here on earth, how or where did they develop??
The bottom line is that whichever way it happened nothing is going to happen as a result and the schools can teach whatever they like because again NOTHING is going to happen and we will never know how it all came about. This is very similar to thinking what happens after death, no one will ever know. There are many subjects that are argued today that result in nothing happening, typical are the “feel good laws”, border protection, policemen on horseback, the war on drugs, abortion, traffic laws (the people that pay attention to the laws are people interested in their own safety and do not need a law, the scofflaws do not care), ect, you get the idea, think about it!!!
Thanks to the Grandson Chet.
ROD GALLOWAY
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RAMONA, CA 92065
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20 Aug 2008 / Uncategorized
An Appeal to Firefighters, Present and Past from a retired FDNY Lieutenant
Fellow Firefighters, A great tragedy befell our community on September 11, 2001, an unprecedented 343 deaths in the line of duty. As horrible as that toll is, if there were a rational explanation for it, we could accept it and mourn. We all understood the risk we accepted when we took the oath of office, that chance might cut short our lives when we placed ourselves in harm’s way in the public’s service. This is what we are paid for and it is our honor. However, in short, the official explanation of the events of that day are not only insufficient, they are fantastic and cannot bear rational examination. We are asked to believe that on that day three structural steel buildings, which have never before in history collapsed because of fire, fell neatly into their basements at the speed of gravity, their concrete reduced to dust. We are asked to believe that jet fuel (kerosene) can melt steel. We are asked to believe that the most sophisticated air defense system in the world, that responded to sixty-eight emergencies in the year prior to 9-11 in less than twenty minutes allowed aircraft to wander about for up to an hour and a half. We are asked to believe that the steel and titanium components of an aircraft that supposedly hit the Pentagon “evaporated”. There is much, much more if anyone cares to look into it. Trade Tower #7 by itself is the “smoking gun”. Not hit by an aircraft, with only a few relatively small fires, it came down in a classic crimp and implosion, going straight into its basement, something only very precise demolition can accomplish, which takes days if not weeks to prepare. The 9-11 Commission didn’t even mention it, and F.E.M.A. actually stated they DIDN’T KNOW WHY IT COLLAPSED AND LEFT IT AT THAT. Brothers, I know that the implications of the above are hard, almost unthinkable, but the official explanation is utter nonsense, and three hundred and forty three murdered brothers are crying out for justice. Demand a genuine investigation into the events of September 11!
-Anton Vodvarka, Lt. FDNY (ret)
Lt. Vodvarka served on FDNY Ladder Co 26, Rescue Co. 3, Rescue Co. 1, Engine Co. 92, Ladder 82 and Ladder 101. He was awarded the Merit Class 1 award, the Prentice Medal.
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_____________________________________________________________________________________Erik Lawyer speaks at the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth press conference demanding a new investigation. Firefighters for 9-11 Truth strongly support AE911 Truth in securing a new investigation.Read more…
Click here to hear some of the witnesses and recordings NIST claims don’t exist._____________________________________________________________________________________N.F.P.A. 921 19.4.8.2.6 – ExtremismDuring an investigation, many things must be considered. Aside from the physical evidence, and witness testimony, suspect criminal history also must be analyzed. The investigation must include past history and the Modus Operandi, “M.O.” for short.
N.F.P.A. 921 19.4.8.2.6 – Extremism addresses terrorism specifically. It reads:
_____________________________________________________________________________________
A common sense test: You’re dispatched to a house fire in a 2 story with a basement. Upon arrival, all 3 floors are well involved. After extinguishment, the neighbor across the street tells you he saw flashes on all 3 floors within seconds of each other. It turns out the owner has arson convictions on his record. You smell gasoline. Now, should you test the debris for accelerants? No matter what the owner and his friends tell you, wouldn’t you still test it? It’s a “NO-Brainer”…isn’t it?
NOW, HOW WOULD YOU INVESTIGATE?Look at the facts of the WTC, specifically Tower 7, collapses:1) Terrorists used explosives on WTC 1 in 1993.2) Over 118 first responders reported hearing explosions before all 3 collapses, many said it sounded like the “bang-bang-bang” you hear during a demolition.3) We have video, photographic and audio evidence of explosions after the impact and before collapse.4) Live news was reporting multiple explosions, and the possibility terrorists also planted explosives.5) Barry Jennings, the Emergency Coordinator for the NY Housing Authority reported explosions in Tower 7. He also reported being knocked down by explosions prior to the collapse of the tower.6) Molten steel AND concrete were found at Ground Zero “remember, hydrocarbon fires do not burn hot enough to melt steel or concrete.”N.F.P.A. 921- 19.2.4 Exotic Accelerants states that molten steel and concrete could indicate the use of exotic accelerants, specifically Thermite.7) WTC 7 was the first concrete and steel high rise to collapse during a fire that had not been struck by an aircraft. It was determined not to be significantly damaged by the falling debris, and diesel fuel tanks DID NOT contribute significantly to the fire (according to NIST final report 2008).
So, with all these indicators, would you test for exotic accelerants/explosive residue/Thermite? How could you confirm or rule out the possibility terrorists planted explosives in addition to the aircraft hits?
Why does N.I.S.T. REFUSE to this day to test for exotic accelerants in the most heinous crime in U.S. history? With the first high rise building collapses in history, why would N.I.S.T. NOT test for accelerants? Especially, with so many indicators, one in which we have lost so many lives, so many Brothers, so many Freedoms, and our Economy. I have not found a single fire investigator who can give a reason other than they didn’t want to find exotic accelerants or they were incompetent! Well, if it was incompetence, we can go back and still test. These scientists have tested…read their results!!If you can’t answer why, then please take the time to investigate. Browse our website, and please sign the petition. Our communities trust us. If we let them know this is not how professionals investigate, or how we treat our Brothers and Sisters who gave so much, they will listen. Also, please visit www.FealGoodFoundation.com and learn how to help our Brothers and Sisters in need.
Many of our Brothers and Sisters are sick and dying from their exposures at Ground Zero, our Country is crumbling. I am asking you to do something much more difficult than fighting a fire. I am asking you to be as professional as you would be on any emergency call. I am asking you to review the evidence surrounding 9-11. I am asking you to join us in demanding an investigation that follows National Standards, and passage of the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act to take care of the sick Ground Zero workers. I am asking you to stand with us to help SAVE OUR BROTHERS, SISTERS AND OUR COUNTRY!Respectfully,Erik Lawyererik@firefightersfor911truth.org
YOU CAN PRINT THIS AS A FLYER AND DELIVER TO FIREHOUSES Fire Station Letter
“EXOTIC ACCELERANTS”
This is directly from the 2001 Edition of the National Fire Protection Association NFPA 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations.
19.2.4 - “Exotic Accelerants. Mixtures of fuels and Class 3 or Class 4 oxidizers may produce an exceedingly hot fire and may be used to start or accelerate a fire. Thermite mixtures also produce exceedingly hot fires. Such accelerants generally leave residues that may be visually or chemically identifiable.
Exotic accelerants have been hypothesized as having been used to start or accelerate some rapidly growing fires and were referred to in these particular instances as high temperature accelerants (HTA). Indicators of exotic accelerants include an exceedingly rapid rate of fire growth, brilliant flares (particularly at the start of the fire), and melted steel or concrete. A study of 25 fires suspected of being associated with HTAs during the 1981-1991 period revealed that there was no conclusive scientific proof of the use of such HTA.
Notice how little volume of flame we have, yet a significant amount of molten material that appears to be metal pouring out of the building.
In any fire where the rate of fire growth is considered exceedingly rapid, other reasons for this should be considered in addition to the use of an accelerant, exotic or otherwise. These reasons include ventilation, fire suppression tactics, and the type and configuration of the fuels.”
NIST denies the existence of molten metal even though we have video and photographic evidence suggesting otherwise. We also have witness testimony from FDNY firemen themselves. Jet fuel and content fires do not produce the temperatures necessary to produce molten steel - that is why NIST has to deny the very presence of molten metal. This is not small stuff. This is a “smoking gun.” NFPA very clearly states melted steel or concrete is a sign of exotic accelerants. Therefore, the debris should have been thoroughly analyzed for exotic accelerants, specifically Thermite.
Now, remember, the investigation is just that…an investigation. We do not need overwhelming undisputable evidence to test for accelerants. It is very routine to test a house fire for accelerants. So, why at the first and only high rise building collapse sites due to fire, was this not done? How do we get safer buildings and solve crimes if we don’t test for the very things that could have led to the collapse?
This is not something to walk away from. We have to stand up together and demand a thorough investigation, following the National Standards, and justice.
Here is the video of NIST denying molten metal even though we have several FDNY members, very clearly stating the presence of molten metal.
Remember, you are the Jury…Who are you going to believe?
MOLTEN METAL AND CONCRETE
Remember 19.2.4 says molten steel or concrete - we have BOTH
Now, eventhough NIST refused to test the debris or dust for exotic accelerants, former BYU Professor Steven Jones and Jeffrey Farrer, a professor of nanochemistry at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, have analyzed several dust samples collected from the surrounding areas immediately following the collapse.
Click here to see their report which very clearly shows the presence of “exotic accelerants,” specifically “nano-thermite.”
Click here to read the Deseret News article reporting on their discovery.
High-order damage is the result of rapid rates of pressure rise.
“HIGH-ORDER DAMAGE”
NFPA 921
18.3.2 - “High-Order Damage. High-order damage is characterized by shattering of the structure, producing small, pulverized debris. Walls, roofs, and structural members are splintered or shattered, with the building completely demolished. Debris is thrown great distances, possibly hundreds of feet. High-order damage is the result of rapid rates of pressure rise.”
We see all signs of “high-order damage” in all three building collapses. There is no arguing this. And, it’s very clearly stated “high-order damage is the result of rapid rates of pressure rise.”
Now if we look at NFPA 921 14.3 “Preservation of the Fire Scene and Physical Evidence” we find the following “the cause of a fire or explosion is not known until near the end of the investigation. Therefore, the evidentiary or interpretative value of various pieces of physical evidence observed at the scene may not be known until, at, or near the end of the fire scene examination, or until the end of the complete investigation. As a result, the entire fire scene should be considered physical evidence and should be protected and preserved.”
It doesn’t get much clearer than this. This is Investigation-101! For, all those debunkers and detractors who say “it’s obvious” why the buildings came down, I beg to differ, and so does the NFPA -”the cause of a fire or explosion is not known until near the end of the investigation.” We are professionals, we are not supposed to jump to conclusions, and we are not supposed to let political and public factors determine what we do and don’t investigate. We definitely are not supposed to destroy the very evidence that will provide the answers. And, when every indicator in “the book” is screaming “high-order” explosive damage, we have a history of prior explosives use by terrorists in those exact buildings, we have over 100 first responders reporting hearing “secondary” explosions, the fact that evidence was destroyed and this wasn’t investigated thoroughly is nothing short of criminal! It’s time to get real loud about this. Our Brothers were murdered. My fellow firefighters, we can’t afford to brush this off to politics or ignore this anymore. Stand up with Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, demand answers, and justice.
“HIGH EXPLOSIVES”
NFPA 921 “18.12.2 High Exlosives…The effects produced by diffuse phase (i.e., fuel-air) explosions and solid explosives are very different. In a diffuse phase explosion (usually deflagration), structural damage will tend to be uniform and omnidirectional, and there will be relatively widespread evidence of burning, scorching, and blistering. In contrast, the rate of combustion of a solid explosive is extremely fast in comparison to the speed of sound. Therefore, pressure does not equalize through the explosion volume and extremely high pressures are generated near the explosion. At the location of the explosion, there should be evidence of crushing, splintering, and shattering effects produced by the higher pressures. Away from the source of the explosion, there is usually very little evidence of intense burning or scorching, except where hot shrapnel or firebrands have landed on combustible materials.”
18.12.2 is very clear. Fuel-air explosions (i.e.- JET FUEL) will be relatively widespread and there will be evidence of burning, scorching, and blistering. If the lobby truly “blew out” from the jet fuel explosion we would see extensive burning, scorching, and blistering. And, think about it, the elevator shafts do not stop in the lobby, they went below the lobby, so why did this apparent “fireball” pick the lobby to exit? Now, carefully look at this video, and you be the judge.
Do you see any signs of burning, scorching, or blistering? On your size-up pay close attention to the plants and the ceiling…do you see ANY soot? is this what you would expect to see after a “jet-fueled fireball” blew out the lobby?
Does this match the damage we would expect to see with solid explosives? (i.e. crushing, splintering, and shattering effects produced by higher pressures).
Click here to see the summary of evidence that proves conclusively that 3 World Trade Center buildings should have been tested for “exotic accelerants.” It also establishes the most probable cause of collapse on 9/11/2001 to be the result of controlled demolitions. It makes no attempt to determine why, or to imply by whom.
Have you ever asked yourself, what evidence does the government have that proves those specific terrorists were behind it? Well, here it is….click on the link below and it will take you to the evidence they have accumulated. Their strongest evidence is shown below.
GOVERNMENT EVIDENCE
The following photographs are from trial exhibits from United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui Criminal No. 01-455-A
Saudi arabian passport in the name of satam suqami found at the World Trade Center after the collapse of the buildings
Here is the CNN article about the discovery.
Now, remember when the planes flew into the Towers there was a massive fireball that has been officially stated to be the cause of the eventual collapse of the building. So, this passport had to survive the initial fireball without a singe, fly out of the building, and remain in a safe place because it was found after the debris from the buildings blanketed the area.
Backside of Satam Passport recovered on the street after the collapse of the buildings.
Partial ID card reading ALHAZMI from the Pentagon crash site
Flight 93 crash site crater
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia passport for Saeed A A A Al Ghamdi recovered from the United Airlines Flight 93 crash site.
Assem-Jarrah business card recovered from flight 93 crash site
Terrorists were reported to be wearing red bandanas. This bandana was recovered from the Flight 93 crash site.
Terrorist photo from Flight 93 Crash Site
Recovered from Flight 93 Crash Site
Terrorist's driver license recovered from Flight 93 crash site
Example of titanium and steel engines that were not identifiable at crash site.
After looking at the evidence you should come to your own conclusions. And, if you think this doesn’t add up, please read more, sign our petition, and get involved.
We are not implying the improbable is impossible. As professional firefighters, we have seen many things from fire, accident and crime scenes that don’t “make sense”. What we are suggesting is that there is more than sufficient evidence to doubt the “official” government story. There was no reason to destroy the very steel from all three towers that would have aided in the investigation. There is no reason to withold vast amounts of evidence that would very clearly support or disprove their version (ie: hard evidence proving the make/model/specific registration numbers from the aircraft, or the complete collection of the Pentagon vidoes, specifically any images of a commercial jet flying into the Pentagon). There is a large body of physical, photographic, audio, witness testimony and video evidence that directly contradicts the “official” story. We challenge you to really look at what the goverment has presented versus what many independent researchers have produced.
Colonel Nelson says it very well.
Col. George Nelson, MBA, U.S. Air Force (ret) “ Former U.S. Air Force aircraft accident investigator and airplane parts authority. Graduate, U.S. Air Force War College. 34-year Air Force career.
Licensed commercial pilot. Licensed airframe and powerplant mechanic.
Essay:“In all my years of direct and indirect participation, I never witnessed nor even heard of an aircraft loss, where the wreckage was accessible, that prevented investigators from finding enough hard evidence to positively identify the make, model, and specific registration number of the aircraft — and in most cases the precise cause of the accident. …
The government alleges that four wide-body airliners crashed on the morning of September 11 2001, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 human beings, yet not one piece of hard aircraft evidence has been produced in an attempt to positively identify any of the four aircraft. On the contrary, it seems only that all potential evidence was deliberately kept hidden from public view.
http://www.physics911.net/georgenelson
COURAGE
On September 11, 2001 hundreds of our Brothers had the courage to stand up to the actions of Terrorists, and enter those towers to help rescue people and extinguish fires. 343 firefighters and 60 police officers gave their lives standing up for what they believed in… helping others in their time of need. Well, my Brothers and Sisters, it is our turn to show some courage. We must have the courage to confront the horrors of that day, the humility to consider we don’t know the whole story, the willingness to educate ourselves, and the responsibility to inform others. We must have the courage to stand up to those who are stopping a true investigation into who murdered more than 3,000 innocent civilians and over 400 of our Brothers.
We must demand answers and accountability for why hundreds of New York Firemen didn’t hear evacuation orders, how 3 towers collapsed so quickly and so explosively, and why thousands of rescue workers and civilians alike were not warned of the extremely dangerous atmosphere that was known to exist.
If you think the media or our government has given us the answers, think again. If you think this can’t happen again, think again. Seven years later most Americans haven’t even heard of Tower 7. Seven years later, most Americans don’t know thousands more of those rescue workers are sick, and many are dying from their exposures at Ground Zero. Seven years later, the FBI still hasn’t listed Osama Bin Laden as “wanted” for the 9/11 attacks. This is incredible–they are the lead investigators, and they don’t have enough evidence to put him on the “most wanted” list for those attacks? So, why do so many Americans believe he was behind it? Why are we at war over it? Do you know what evidence there is? The destruction of evidence, obstruction of justice, incomplete answers, and abysmal accountability is disgusting and unacceptable.
We must all look at the evidence with an open mind and make rational unbiased judgments. Remember, you don’t have to be an expert to sit on a jury, and you have the right to be critical of, and demand answers from the “experts”. Take the time to gather facts, and have the courage to ask for more. If you come to the same conclusion as the FBI, and don’t place him on your “most wanted” list, then have the courage to help find those responsible for the deaths of so many of our Brothers and Sisters. We all need to show some courage by demanding answers and justice!!
ONE LIEUTENANT’S PERSPECTIVE
Earl Emerson30 year veteran Seattle Fire DepartmentAuthor of Vertical Burn, Into the Inferno, Pyro, Firetrap, and numerous other fire novels.
….If you’re a firefighter you knew the government was lying that first week when the EPA administrator, Christine Whitman, told the public the air in lower Manhattan was safe to breathe. Any firefighter who’d been on the job more than two weeks knew that was a crock. Now, up to seventy percent of the people working on the site and living in the area have lung disease. There were other, more crucial lies. Cruise this site. Open your mind. For any firefighter, this is the most important website you will visit this year or any other year.
Read full article
MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
Erik LawyerFounding MemberAugust 23, 2008
As Firefighters we immediately respond to, and risk everything for a “Mayday” call. Most Firefighters go an entire career without calling a “Mayday”. We know our Brothers only call one if someone is in serious peril and they can’t handle it themselves. By the Grace of God, I have never had to call a “Mayday” on the fireground or in the air. But, I am calling one now on our soil. “MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY!!!” Our Country, Our sick Brothers and Sisters desperately need your HELP.
Read the full articleWant to learn more? Be sure to open all the hyperlinks in the article for the “Big Picture”
Notice: Not all firefighters agree with our position, nor is this website endorsed by any City or Agency employing the firefighters who have signed our petition. These are our individual beliefs.
----- An Obituary printed in the London Times........
"Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; life isn't always fair; and maybe it was my fault. Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when political correctness became the "in thing" and the well-intentioned but overbearing "Human Rights laws" were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate, teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch, and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition. Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Aspirin to a student but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault. Common Sense finally gave up the will to live after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust, his wife, Discretion, his daughter, Responsibility his son, Reason.
He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers: I know my rights, I want it now, someone else is to blame, and I'm a victim
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing."
And, I'm not even a Republican!
Date: Saturday, March 14, 2009, 10:31 AM
Here's the opinion piece from Margaret Bengs I referred to at our last meeting, I hope you enjoy it. Could we discuss including this piece somehow in an upcoming newsletter, on the website or even in the weekly newsletter to school parents? See you on the 31st!
Catholic schools swamped by secular tide
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By Margaret A. Bengs Special to The Bee
Published: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 - 12:00 am Page 19A Last Modified: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 - 7:49 am
The announcement that Loretto High School, the Catholic school that has educated Sacramento girls since 1955, will close in June – unless a newly launched effort by parents and the Diocese of Sacramento to save it succeeds – is a microcosm of the steady crumbling of our religious institutions under the weight of rampant secularism and economic strains.
Catholic school enrollment in the Diocese of Sacramento has now dropped eight years in a row and has been dropping nationally for decades.
We can no longer operate under the modern delusion that the weakening of our faith-based institutions will have no consequence on our public life. In fact, these institutions provide the guideposts that help us advance the common good and halt dysfunctions in the social order.
Catholic schools are islands of refuge in a sea of secularism that are helping us preserve our spiritual and moral heritage. The loss of such a school is the loss of a small community, but one that shapes the minds and hearts of its students in ways that will last a lifetime.
As a graduate of San Luis Rey Academy, a Catholic girl’s high school adjacent to Mission San Luis Rey, also now sadly closed, the images of innocence and respect for scholarship forever etched in my mind are so different from what many children in public school see today.
Instead of the below-knee, checkered blue and brown pleated skirts with crisp white blouses that we wore, in today's public schools, we see hip-hugging pants and purple hair.
Instead of nuns clothed in long black habits modeling service and selflessness, a local teacher is accused of sending lewd text messages with sexual photos to two students.
Public school students used to be exposed to themes of virtue and character. McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader, for example, taught in public schools a century ago, while not endorsing a particular religion, acknowledged, as did our nation's founders, the importance of religion to a civilized society. "Religion is a social concern," it stated, "not merely a private affair," for it is "the best support of the virtues and principles, on which the social order rests." Erase all thought of a supreme being from a community, it predicted, "and selfishness would absorb the whole man. Appetite, knowing no restraint, would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws." Since then, these lessons have been swept away with the modern judiciary-endorsed sterilization of public schools from teaching moral values.
Replacing faith-based solutions to community problems is now most often a government remedy. Yet, while government welfare and other social programs can offer material help, they cannot answer the deeper human needs. And their burdensome costs often deplete families of resources they would have had to meet the challenges themselves.
To those who believe we can divorce spiritual influences from the public square without consequence, let us ask: Are we better off today than we were in the 1950s, when Loretto was established, and when religious education and vocations were a stronger and more vibrant part of our community? When Hollywood portrayed the importance of religion to community life, and when a weekly program by Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen actually aired on mainstream media? One look at today's crime, family breakdown, child abuse, gangs, teen pregnancies, addiction and other symptoms of moral disorders reveals the answer.
No, life in my high school was not wholly idyllic. Contemporary cultural influences had begun to overpower the spiritual. Nuns eventually discarded their habits. Hardcover missiles were tossed in favor of paper ones with new translations, elevating the contemporary over the permanent.
But unlike today, we didn't use the excuse of human error to knock down a religion or a group of people. We were taught that every day, humans must struggle with our darker side and that character was developed by making the right – and usually more difficult – choice.
The question is, will we let the hardening and secularization of our culture sweeps us out on its tide, or will we do our part to strengthen the tide of good pulling us back toward the sun? For real solutions to our social problems, we need more than economic recovery. We need moral recovery.
What better place to begin than to restore our spiritual heritage one school at a time, so that we will pass on to our children the beauty and innocence of a world based on the whole truth of the human being.
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SPREADING DEMOCRACY
3-17-2009
Taking instructions from the drums of war by Shakespeare and the confessions of Goering during the Nuremburg trials then adding the Bush doctrine on the pretext of spreading democracy you have a world in chaos and in recession heading for a depression.
It is easy to do all we need is someone to invent a disaster, implement the disaster, then go after some country that would be easy to destroy and claim they were the cause of the disaster and invade and demand they vote for a democracy. The dissidents are killed off, the ones that oppose the election and the majority that is left especially the ones that see the writing on the wall and don’t want to be killed and find it easier to vote with the majority and vote for democracy. Knowing that the invading military will finally go home after they have had their fun of killing off the opposition and they can then resume life before the disaster.
Yes we lose many more than was killed in the disaster but that is the price of spreading democracy. Also the USA does not benefit one bit so it is easy to say we did not do the invasion for our own benefit and as a result we spent billions and many lives and received nothing for the effort . The military did a good job but that is their business and in order to elevate their position in the government and keep funding at the highest level it is important for them to put forth their best effort. Whether they win or lose which is often the case they will continue the crusade to fight the perpetual wars.
By inventing a disaster it is best done with suicidal people that as a result of their religion they think they will go to heaven a non-existence place and use them for the invention. The people that arranged the invention will take the methods to their grave. Dead men tell no tales. The Taliban or Al QaIda is not the kind of terrorist group to fly aircraft into buildings, just not characteristic of that group, they normally use IED’s (improvised explosive devices) that are easy to get and use, and even if Ben Laden admits to the venture it is only because he benefits from the propaganda and he never had anything to do with the 9/11 attack. Ben Laden did not take credit for the attack! That attack needed an accomplish like the CIA and a person within the government to give the order, then finding suicidal persons was easy in Saudi Arabia and the money to implement the attack. Steel buildings do not collapse due to fires and the third building was not hit by an aircraft, melted steel was found in the aftermath that was caused by thermite. The hole in the pentagon was not due to a commercial airline, more like a missile.
The results of the attack was enough to propel the military to invade an innocent country, killing thousands, maiming thousands, spending billions of borrowed money, looking for one small group and the leader Bin Laden and they are still looking but the complexion has changed because they cannot find the so called perpetrator, so change the subject and purse a new goal in order to keep the conflict going.
PLEDGE TO THE FLAG AND THE REPUBLIC
9-19-2005
A pledge of allegiance to the flag and country is an ok thing to do but why do kids need to do it every day. Once in a lifetime should be enough unless you renounce the allegiance then you may need to do it again if you choose. Kids that are young enough to make the pledge are probably not old enough to know what it really means. After they are old enough to know what they are pledging they will also find out that equal justice and liberty for all could be a goal but it doesn’t exist in this country or probably any country. God certainly does not have anything to do with a pledge to the flag and the republic. You don’t get baptized every day, but the Catholics go thru the same ritual every day, why not just do it once per lifetime. But if you want to do all those things then set aside a day and say all those things, the pledge, the baptism, the Mass, etc. and then get on with your life and do some good in the world and quit wasting time and money on things that don’t matter to anyone.
A JEWISH PERSPECTIVE ABOUT THEIR RELIGION
BY AL SAPOWITH
rod,Good seeing you. We should do more. Here’s my paper.Al THE SH’MAIt seems logical to me that the concept of God came from the imagination of man. Seeing the wonders of nature that he could not explain, hence feared, man invented gods that controlled these wonders and protected him from them. This, I believe, was the basis for the sun gods, moon gods, harvest gods, fertility gods, and the like, Polytheism at it’s best. In Barbara Tuchman’s words “In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind, they are the creatures of man, not vice versa.” It is incredible, that well before any of nature’s deified phenomena of the polytheistic world was understood, well before the term science had any meaning in the modern day sense, that anyone had the insight and vision to realize that if there was any god at all, there could only be one God. One has to marvel at the audacity of those who went against all authority, beliefs, practices, and teachings and rejected the plethora of gods being worshipped by their neighbors. This was the start of monotheism. The one God concept is attributed to Abraham. It’s not clear that there was an Abraham. It could be a name chosen by an ancient seer for the first letter of the alphabet. It’s not clear that Abraham was the only person with this concept. There was at least one monotheistic Egyptian Pharaoh. Some historians question whether Moses was one of those monotheistic Egyptians. It is not known just how long this one God concept was around before the Hebrews accepted it and made it the cornerstone of their religion. But, the fact is that some 4000 years ago ancient peoples, later called Jews, did form and embrace the concept of one God, an invisible God that could not be portrayed. These peoples encompassed their concept of God, their theology, within a single sentence, the “Sh’ma”; Hebrew Here Hear oh Israel the Lord our God the Lord is One I’m proud to be of these peoples.A MEANING FOR THE SH’MAThere are many facets of Judaism. This paper addresses one, Jewish theology, our thoughts about God, a meaning for the Sh’ma. It is unemotionally philosophical in nature. The "felt", "heart", "mystical" aspects of Judaism are outside its purview. Nevertheless, though not discussed, it is hoped that the understanding of the Sh’ma with its philosophical base, presented herein, can support other Jewish facets. While the Sh’ma is the one common thread throughout Judaism, Jews hardly ever talk about the meaning of the Sh’ma. We have sermons about morality, our quest for tikom olim, but essentially no sermons about Jewish theology. Jewish religious feeling, from its very beginnings, was based not on theoretical reasoning about God and theological matters but on a system of life as regulated by the Torah. The practical character of the Jewish religion, which stresses action not contemplation, has not been favorable to the development of a formulated philosophy of life or dogma. Moses Maimonides’ thirteen articles of faith constitute the best known attempt to formulate concise dogmatic formulas. Believing knowledge of truth can be derived from reason for the true philosopher (the ‘adult’), but requires revelation for the masses who do not know philosophy (the ‘child’), he assembled the 113 rules of the Halakah. Following these rules one would not stray from Judaism.To many, this was the last significant advance in Jewish philosophy or theology. Those who hold this view assume that knowing the Jewish intellectual classics of the Middle Ages or the Talmud equips one to fashion a philosophy of Judaism that will speak to all situations. They do not appreciate or recognize the unique difficulties which modern science and culture raise for Judaism, for all religions for that matter, with Judaism facing the additional challenge of emancipation. When we were confined to the ghettos of Europe we were separated from the rest of society. In each land we constituted a country within a country, with little interference from the outside world. We had our own way of life, our own laws. Being freed brought forth the questions, how can one join the rest of society (which was Christian) and be modern (compatible with science), and still be Jewish. Here’s a brief review of some Jewish philosophers who wrestled with these problems and their thoughts about God. Moses Mendelssohn (1700’s) was the first in the modern era to question the old ways. While he believed the existence and providence of God to be self-evident and that Judaism was divinely inspired when God gave the Israelites the laws at Sinai, he attempted to present Judaism as a religion of reason, free from dogmatic faith and creedal fetters. Judaism appeared to him not as a revealed religion but as a revealed legislation, interpreting revelation as a form of reason. The Torah, he maintained, commands not belief but deeds. He tried to substitute a religion of reason, thus radically denying the dogmatic character of Judaism. A century later Hermann Cohen, the foremost Kantian scholar of his time, developed his ideas on Judaism. To a great extent Cohen’s view of religion grew out of his passionate concern with ethics. Every ethical act ultimately aims at the moral interrelationship of all people. As is the case with scientific knowledge, our efforts to realize the good never accomplish the ideal, which, with each achievement, still seems to be as far away. The ethical task will be accomplished only in that ideal time religion has called the coming of the Messiah (Cohen considers the Messiah a mythological person). He sees humankind gradually extending the range and depth of moral relationships through its own natural efforts, achieving a messianic age at the end of time. Cohen’s affirmation of God may be traced by way of the infinite time required for the ethical task. If the ethical task is to continue to its ideal completion, there must be some guarantee that nature and humankind continue without an end. But, not only was nature believed to be ruled by laws that are indifferent to ethics, the scientific view of his day suggested that the world was running down to randomness which would limit time. If people believed morality could never reach its goal, that belief might generate despair and abandonment of ethical striving. This contradiction between the natural and ethical realms was philosophically intolerable. In order to maintain its rationality, Cohen’s system required an idea that would allow science and ethics their distinctiveness yet bring them into relation with one another, one that would permit ethics to be lived out in the realm of nature. This integrating idea was “God” on a plane separate and above both ethics and science. He defined this system, for Judaism, as ethical monotheism (a religion of reason).This reasoning followed Kant’s way of thinking about religion, namely, starting from human experience and then seeking to establish God’s reality. This is the liberal approach to religion as against the traditional approach that is based on the idea of God giving people knowledge or revelation. As the twentieth century moved on, Jewish thinkers were increasingly troubled by the liberalism derived from Hermann Cohen’s ethical monotheism. It led to the easy inference that everything in Judaism other than ethics - (belief in God, devotion to the Jewish people, the rich way of life mandated by the Torah) - might almost be eliminated, or, at least, considered secondary. The issue was not so much the primacy of ethics but their sufficiency. The premise may be put positively: an authentic Jewish existence is more than ethical though ethics are central to it. But what constitutes the more-than-ethical aspects of being a Jew? Leo Baeck tried to answer this question by trying to modify rather than break with the Cohen’s rationalist interpretation of Judaism.As a religious liberal Baeck believed in religious change. He therefore had the responsibility of clarifying what remained true in Judaism today as in the past, despite all the apparent reforms of ideas and practice. He was free not only of a philosophical system as he approached the texts, but also of the traditional theologian’s insistence that they were God’s revelation. For Baeck the validity of Judaism did not rest on a unique event at Sinai, but rather on the truth of the central ideas that the Jewish people had maintained over the ages.In terms of result there is not much to separate the rabbi-historian Leo Baeck from the philosopher of Judaism, Hermann Cohen, because Baeck, found ethical monotheism to be the essence of Judaism: “from the very beginning of the real, the prophetic religion of Israel, its cardinal factor was the moral law. Judaism is not merely ethical, but ethics constitute its principle”. But, Baeck felt that Cohen’s Neo-Kantian exposition establishing the centrality of God in human existence in terms of God as an idea or a concept was too abstract to elicit piety and hardly provided a reason for expanding ethics into a broader pattern of religious observance. To the devout, there remains an unbearable distance between what philosophy says God is and what the religious life discloses. To bridge this gap Baeck utilized the notion of religious consciousness, introducing the felt, subjective aspect of religion into his explanation of Judaism. This results in two motifs for the essence of Judaism, human ethics and religious consciousness. In Baeck’s non-philosophic approach he uses religious consciousness to reclaim aspects of traditional Jewish piety that were inaccessible to the Neo-Kantians. Religious conscienceless senses the mystery behind the creation which fosters a religious certainty that is incalculably richer than the rational assertions of philosophy. This religious certainty, or experience, testifies to what lies beyond the ethical, to the God who is more than the idea implied by ethics but is the One who has the right to issue imperatives and make them categorical. Reason cannot reach such a God. For Baeck, ethics without this mysterious grounding in God is mere moralism. For Judaism, there can be no ethics that does not stem from a living God who establishes relationships with humankind.There is the concern that intimate talk about God engenders an anthropomorphism that believers can take seriously. This destroys God’s transcendence, thereby vitiating the authority by which the ethical comes to us as a categorical demand. Medieval philosophers waged a protracted battle against this misunderstanding. They succeeded but only by turning God into an abstraction that denied the innermost reality of religious experience. Judaism overcame that danger by asserting a fundamental paradox about God: the exalted, transcendent God is nonetheless the present, personal God. Nothing stands between each individual and God - God is that close - but the very same God remains the God of the infinite heights and depths of creation. The ethical and the devotional are simultaneously affirmed in Judaism. Does this mean that Judaism affirms a personal God? Of that, Baeck insists, nothing can be said today and nothing was said in classic Judaism. In the 1930’s, when America was in the depths of the depression, anti-Semitism was rampant and Jewish life was in crisis, the first major American philosophy of Judaism appeared with the publication of “Judaism as a Civilization” by Mordecai Kaplan. As a rationalist, Kaplan differed from the German rationalists by focusing not on the autonomous, thinking individual but on the Jewish people. Kaplan believed that one cannot usefully speak of individual Jewish identity without talking about the corporate nature of the Jews. In Kaplan's eyes, contemporary Judaism's difficulties arose from the upheaval that affected all Western peoples and religions in modern times. He defined the sources of these difficulties as "Nationalism" and "Naturalism”. "Nationalism" includes the concept of a changing society from monarchal, one that is divinely ordered, hence unchangeable, to that of a secular state founded on a social contract. These changes brought the Jews emancipation, the end of ghetto existence both physically and spiritually. After centuries of segregation, full participation in the life of their country entailed a radical change in their accustomed way of life and their manner of thinking about it."Naturalism" identifies the way people in secular states think about the world. At the simplest, naturalism is the rejection of supernaturalism. Moderns limit their thought to this world and structure it in terms of the natural order. They consider the scientific approach to reality, including human beings and society, the most reliable method of ascertaining truth. As a consequence, naturalistic religious thinking focuses on people and their welfare rather than on God and God's purposes. Modernity involves a radical shift from theocentrism to anthropocentrism and Kaplan often employs the term "humanism" in this people-focused but not God-denying sense.Theological humanism revolutionizes the classic religious emphases on supernatural revelation, miracles, and otherworldly salvation. Not just God's word, but God too, must now be found in, not above, the natural order; miracles are dismissed as unscientific, and this world, the only one human beings can know, must be the place in which they seek salvation. Most moderns live by these views, though some are unconscious of that fact. Kaplan therefore has no patience with religious leaders who timidly still use the old religious terms. A truly contemporary understanding of Judaism must be naturalistic so as to be coherent with our modern worldview.In what sense does Kaplan use the word "God"? He rejects any description of God as personal, for to him a personal Divinity is an anthropomorphic one. No naturalistic thinker could accept such a God. Kaplan also rejected reference to God in anthropopsychic terms with phrases ascribing to God human qualities such as: He loved, He punished, He rewarded. Some philosophers have identified God with strictly impersonal scientific concepts such as force or energy. Kaplan rejects this view on two grounds: first, as an unwarranted metaphysical assertion, albeit a naturalistic one; and second, because it renders God morally neutral. Kaplan's God must be related to human self-realization and that, inevitably has an ethical component. Not a wish or an illusion, God refers to those real processes in nature that support our efforts to live abundantly. Our faith is subjective in being based on our hope that we might fulfill ourselves. It is objective because by God we mean those forces in nature that make it possible for us to achieve our ideals. For Kaplan "God is the Power that makes for salvation”.Can these ideas be summarized? I will try. By applying reason and discarding beliefs in miracles, all found Judaism to be a religion of reason compatible with science. All agree that God should not be considered in anthropomorphic terms or, while discussed only by Kaplan, even anthropopsychic terms. Starting with Cohen all identified Judaism with ethical monotheism and all rejected the concept of a personal God. Some thoughts. In their goal of squaring Judaism with modernity it seems that the God concepts developed by these theologians are quite complex. Perhaps this was in response to the pressure and pace of science and modern thought. In contrast, there was no complexity when the original God concepts were formed. Life was simple then. When the ancient shepherds gazed up at the night sky they were awed by the splendor of the universe. They felt that some Force or God created it all. Can there be such a clear and simple God concept today? Does such a concept have to vie with science, or can it spring from science? With all that science has brought to us there is one consistent message: the more we discover, the more we find we don’t know. When cosmologists look into the sky they divine all manner of phenomena. But, what happens when they get to the end of space, what’s just beyond (infinity of the very large)? Atomic physicists are constantly seeking the smallest particles to identify the building blocks of matter. But, when they find the smallest particle, why can’t it be split (infinity of the very small)? When did time start and what happened just before? Or when will time end and what happens just after? Perhaps there is an infinity of dimensions too, string theory uses ten. There are those who may scoff at these questions, but I doubt that they will ever be amenable to solution by man. Not only is the universe stranger than we know, it is stranger than we can know. Yet, we are surrounded by a universe of infinities which are all beyond my ken. So, like the shepherds of old, in my ignorance, my wonder, my desire to form a whole picture, and perhaps my fear, I choose to place my concept of God at infinity. We are here. Some force started it all. This SINGLE Force, Being, Omnipotence is my God. No concept of God can be proven, all are and must be conjecture. This concept is derived philosophically from the fundamental limits of science. It is as basic as man’s earliest instincts for survival. It is devoid of revelation or miracles. It does not invoke ‘self evidence’ of the existence of God. Calling forth no human attributes, it is devoid of anthropomorphism and anthropopsychism. And, I believe, is compatible with the development of the God idea in Judaism. The Sh’ma encompasses such a concept.TYING A NON PERSONAL GOD TO ETHICSLike the philosophers who did not espouse a personal God, this abstract God of the cosmos, for want of a better name, is so distant it does not engender belief in a personal God. Because humanly, a religion centered on an impersonal God seems a contradiction in terms, the philosophers perceived a need for the laity (the ‘child) to feel a closeness to God. How does one involve oneself personally with a God who takes no personal interest in you? How does one pray to a non personal God? Judaism’s answer has been by asserting the fundamental paradox: nothing stands between each individual and God, God is that close, but the very same God remains the God of the infinite heights and depths of creation. I have trouble with this dual mode or two essences of God. How different is this thinking than Christianity’s Trinity?One could argue philosophically that, in projecting an omnipotent Being that started it all, omnipotence is accompanied by omnipresence. Thus, an omnipresent cosmic God could be all around us, hence close – justifying the paradox. Spinoza saw such a God in all of nature. But, this is pantheism, and with pantheism as with polytheism God can be identified with all aspects of nature. However, that very identification destroys God's transcendence.Given that we relinquish belief in a personal God, when God is declared to be impersonal, what happens to our standards of human development? When God no longer serves as a model for people to emulate, how are ethics to be formulated and maintained? Judaism is grounded in ethics, it is an essence of Judaism, ethical monotheism is an apt description. But, does that description apply to a God of the cosmos? Since this concept does not support the notion of a personal God and does not attribute any qualities to God, is such a God morally neutral? Is there a way to tie ethics to an impersonal God of the cosmos? I was faced with these questions when my wife asked, "if there is no personal God how can there be ethics? Why would anyone choose to do good instead of evil. What generates ethics if there is no fear of a judgmental and wrathful God?” After some deliberation, I decided that the operative word was accommodation. As man grew from a single hunter, to a family, to a tribe, to a complex society he found that his best survival mode was within a group. As such he had to accommodate the needs and wishes of others - to get along, one had to go along. As societies grew more complex laws were developed to set norms for man's relation to his fellow man and to his interplay within society. These included the Noatic laws, the laws of Hamarabi, the Ten Commandments. These laws along with religious tenets helped in the growth of ethical thought and behavior. No law, certainly not its application, is perfect. Man's obedience has from time to time been abysmal. But, one can discern a gradual improvement in society's behavior over the 20,000 years of historical development. This improvement, albeit glacial, is fraught with noise (in the engineering sense), the holocaust being a prime example. Nevertheless, it is clear to me that ethical conduct has slowly made meaningful strides. Some examples. A simple comparison of the mores of the most primitive isolated tribes that still exist with our modern societies can demonstrate this point. Human and animal sacrifice are no longer practiced. Slavery, which was once part of the warp and woof of life, with the Torah promulgating rules pertaining to it, is universally against the law and has almost disappeared. There's a lot more compassion and help for the downtrodden practiced by the societies of today. A recent headline, based on a U.N. report on the status of infant mortality, education, freedom, and poverty proclaims “World becoming a better place”. In response to the shock of the holocaust, Western powers are now advancing the cause of humanitarian intervention. And, while probably premature and rife with politics, the concept and framework of Universal (supra national) Jurisdiction for the world has recently been proposed to enforce this humanitarianism. Since I developed these thoughts I found that there are extensive studies of mankind's "accommodation" under various labels of "altruism", "give and take", "group cooperation", "symbiotic relationships". As they are much more erudite than my explanation and it is a vital issue, it is worthwhile to summarize them, copying and rearranging their writings for clarity. I have found them exciting not only in a scientific sense but also in a theological sense. Mayr pointed out that Darwin's theory of evolution provided a scientific foundation for ethics. This is contrary to the widespread thesis of social Darwinism, promoted at the end of the 19th century by Spencer which posited if natural selection rewards the individual only for behavior that enhances his own survival and reproductive success, how can such pure selfishness lead to any sound ethics? Are not evolutionary explanations at odds with the development of ethics? This old thesis of social Darwinism - strict selfishness - was based on an incomplete understanding of animals, particularly social species. We now know that in a social species not only the individual must be considered, an entire social group can be the target of selection. Darwin applied this reasoning to the human species in 1871 in “The Descent of Man”. The survival and prosperity of a social group depends to a large extent on the harmonious cooperation of the members of the group, and this behavior must be based on altruism. Kin selection and reciprocal helpfulness in particular will be greatly favored. Such altruism, by furthering the survival and prosperity of the group, also indirectly benefits the fitness of the group's individuals. The result amounts to selection favoring altruistic behavior. These observations are not limited to man. Selection for altruism has been demonstrated in recent years to be widespread among many other social animals. There have been a number of computer studies simulating the forces of natural selection. While perhaps tedious, presentation in some detail of their results is in order. In 1950, a game theory known as the Prisoner's Dilemma was conceived. In a simple mode each of two prisoners is asked whether the other committed a crime. Their level of punishment depends on whether one, both, or neither indicates the other's guilt. The two players engaged in this game have only to decide whether they wish to cooperate with each other or not with the following rules for a single encounter: if both choose to cooperate, they each get a reward of three points; if both defect (by not cooperating), they each get only one point. But if one player defects and the other cooperates, the defector gets five points, whereas the player who chooses to cooperate receives nothing. If the first player defects, the second who cooperates will end up with nothing. Clearly, the second player ought to have defected. In fact, even if the first player cooperates, the second should defect, because this combination earns five points instead of three. No matter what the first player does, the second's best option is to defect. But the first player is in exactly the same position. Hence, both players will choose to defect and receive only one point each. Note, by both defecting the group gets 2 points, by both cooperating the group gets 6 points. For a single encounter this game highlights the difference between what is best from an individual's point of view and what is best from a collective view. More realistically, individuals interact frequently rather than just once, so that each participant has to think twice about defecting as this could make the other player defect on the next occasion. So the strategy for the repeated game can change in response to what happened in previous rounds. Extending these experiments to an entire population of programmed players, where each player is wedded to a given strategy (cooperative or selfish) and the payoff, instead of points, is in offspring who have the characteristics of the parent, successive tournaments (generations) are conducted to see which 'personality' will be successful. These computer studies have grown increasingly complex involving sophisticated models and countless strategies. The results show that as the encounters and generations increase, conditions that more closely simulate evolution, the exploiters depleted their own resources while the population of the cooperators increased. Altruism pays off. These results may seem familiar from daily life in the home or office, and may be reasonable for many of the activities humans and other social animals conduct, but for simpler organisms delayed payoffs in the form of future reproductive success should count for little. If life is short and unpredictable, there is scant evolutionary pressure to make long-term investments. And yet biologists observe cooperation even among simple organisms that do not possess such abilities. Creatures, such as many invertebrates, seem to exhibit forms of reciprocal cooperation, even though they often cannot recognize individual players or remember their actions. How can altruistic arrangements be established and maintained in these circumstances? One possible solution is that these players find a fixed set of fellow contestants and make sure the game is played largely with them. In general, this selectivity will be hard to attain. But there is one circumstance in which it is not only easy, it is automatic. If the players occupy fixed sites, and if they interact only with close neighbors, there will be no need to recognize and remember, because the other players are fixed by the geometry. Whereas in many of our simulations players always encounter a representative sample of the population, we have also looked specifically at scenarios in which every player interacts only with a few neighbors on a two-dimensional grid. Such "spatial games" are very recent. They give an altogether new twist to the Prisoner's Dilemma. Consider a spatially constrained version of the tournament, with each member of the population sitting on a square of an extended chessboard. Each player is either a pure cooperator or a pure defector and interacts only with its eight immediate neighbors, playing one round of the Prisoner's Dilemma with each. In the next generation the square is inherited by whoever totaled the most points. A lone cooperator will be exploited by the surrounding defectors and succumb. But four cooperators in a block can conceivably hold their own, because each interacts with three cooperators; a defector, as an outsider, can reach and exploit at most two. If the bonus for cheating is not too large, clusters of cooperators will grow. Conversely, lone defectors will always do well, because they will be surrounded by exploitable cooperators. But by spreading, defectors surround themselves with their like and then diminish their own returns. The actual evolution of such spatial systems depends on the payoff values. It is certainly possible that cooperators are wiped off the board. But we frequently find variously shifting mosaics, with both strategies being maintained. Mixtures of pure cooperators and pure defectors can coexist indefinitely, in fluctuating proportions. In a different but related context, similar spatial patterns allow populations of hosts and parasites, or prey and predators, to survive together, despite the inherent instability of their interactions. (This, to a large extent, simulates the animal kingdom. But, for society, the growth of ethical laws and practices create a bias for the eventual success of the cooperators.) Other choices of grid patterns, including irregular or random arrays, yield similar results. The important requirement is that each player should not interact with too many neighbors. Such cooperative strategies may have been crucial for pre biotic evolution, which many researchers believe may have taken place on surfaces (which spatial structures simulate) rather than in well-stirred solutions. These studies illustrate how cooperation might arise and be maintained in real biological systems. Sophisticated creatures may be drawn to follow strategies that encourage cooperation because of repeated interactions among individuals who can recognize and remember one another. But in simpler organisms, cooperation persists, perhaps by virtue of self-organized spatial structures generated by interactions with immediate neighbors in some fixed spatial array. Catalyzing the replication of a molecule constitutes a form of mutual help. Hence, a chain of catalysts, with each link feeding back on itself, would be the earliest instance of mutual aid. In a sense, cooperation could be older than life. Tying cooperative behavior with the formation of life, as indicated in the above studies of fixed spatial arrays, links ethics to the initiation of life. What could be more scientifically powerful, conceptually sophisticated, or theologically exciting. If God can be tied to ethics through nature then nature is not morally neutral, and an impersonal God, such as a God of the cosmos that created nature is not morally neutral. Doesn’t this concept comply with Baeck’s need for the ‘mysterious grounding of ethics’ without resorting to a personal closeness to God? Doesn’t it also satisfy Kaplan’s complaint about the moral neutrality of an impersonal God? And, isn’t fear of a judgmental and wrathful God no longer required to generate ethical conduct?” RELINQUISHING BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD AND MIRACLES Any form of a personal God suggests a link between the finite and the infinite, an attempt to bound the unboundable, a contradiction of terms. It says that man, one of millions of creatures on earth, a small planet orbiting an insignificant star, in one of the countless galaxies in the universe, holds God’s personal attention - what hubris. It is anthropomorphic in concept, as such, it is a form of a miracle. Can we ignore Maimonides’ admonition, “belief in an anthropomorphic God is worse than idolatry; the literal understanding of the biblical text is no excuse for this erroneous belief…”.An Associated Press poll found that 84% of Americans have faith in divine miracles, 79% believe in the reality of miracles described in the Bible, 63% have personal experiences with miracles or know of people who have, and 67% have prayed to God or a saint for a miracle, generally a cure or recovery for a loved one in a health crisis. Overwhelmingly, the poll showed, those who believe in miracles are Christians. Are Jews in America that far behind? I wonder. The scriptures depict a personal God, one to whom one can pray directly. Many Rabbis reinforce this feeling in their teachings. They seldom, if ever, interpret God in the modern vernacular. We repeat the Sh’ma, but never discuss what it stands for. Is it easier to preach to the ‘child’ rather than the ‘adult’? Is giving up a personal God (a warm and comforting cloak) too painful and traumatic? I’ve heard several Reform rabbis talk of miracles and in private conversation reaffirm their belief in those miracles. Doesn’t any miracle beget another? Where does it end? If we are to believe in miracles what makes Jewish miracles any better than Christian or any other creed’s miracles? If our conception of God is reduced to ‘my miracles are better than yours’, with all the angst involved, why should one remain Jewish?At the other end of the spectrum there are many secular Jews. Embracing modernism and on the leading edge of science, they no longer can conceive God as a divine person with human like (anthropopsychic) qualities. As a result, they commonly disavow their belief in a personal God and, lacking imagination or impetus to perceive the possibility of a new conception of God, they profess atheism. Their numbers have grown since the shock of the Holocaust – how could a just God allow such a tragedy? Some atheists, many Humanistic Jews, even carry their denial to the point where they believe that man, through science, will eventually control nature and understand all the mysteries of the universe. This belief is equivalent to raising man to the pantheon of the gods, which is just as anthropomorphic as the literal belief in scripture. Is it time for Judaism to truly give up the concept of a personal God? This question may well be disturbing to many. What is man's relationship to his God? If there is no personal God to pray to, will he never speak to us again? Are we being asked to loosen our hold on the Rock of Ages only to be swept away in a torrent of uncertainty? I submit we have always been in a torrent of uncertainty. When unexplainably bad things happen to good people we call it a mystery, ‘no one can know God’s ways’. What if the concept of a personal God is an illusion? What if there are no perceivable “God’s ways”? The answers to these conundrums may be in the Torah. Richard Elliott Friedman in his studies has found a hidden theme, a plot, in this remarkable document. Hidden, perhaps, because who would have looked for a unified theme in a book written over hundreds of years with scores of authors and editors? Depicted in “The Disappearance of God”, the relationship between humans and God changes through the course of the Bible. The walking talking God of Genesis who controls everything at the beginning, gradually relinquishes control to man. “As one progresses through the verses, there are fewer and fewer divine appearances, and ultimately none. All that remains of divine acquaintance in the latter books of the Hebrew Bible is the text of laws that God reveals to Moses. As Ezra reads that text publicly, the word of God takes the place of the acts of God. God has moved from the personal to the cosmic saying, ‘I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be.’ ”Commenting on this disappearance of God is not new. From a plaque in the Jewish Museum in Athens: “God is in exile from his creation, not as a consequence of evil but due to the very finity of the created universe… A year, month, day, hour are marked by moments of withdrawal by Jews to contemplate the origin of all phenomena and their relativism in time and space against the awesome unity of God…”What does this message mean? While the Torah can be interpreted literally, metaphorically, ethically, or mystically, each method leads to the same conclusion. We are on our own. We have been granted free will. We are responsible and answerable to ourselves, family, friends, society, mankind, and in a psychological and metaphysical sense to God. Starting with the Ten Commandments, Judaism has provided all the rules to guide us through the tortuous paths of life. It’s up to us to follow them. A SUGGESTIONSome 4000 years ago our people were the first to embrace monotheism. 1500 years later we completed our Torah and became ‘the people of the book’. Over the next 1500 years, through the commentaries, we established laws which have become the bedrock of Western society. Since then the Jewish people have produced gifted scientists and philosophers far out of proportion to our numbers and our ethics have been in the forefront of the emancipation of all peoples. It has been a remarkable history. Where do we go from here? Kaplan wrote “Judaism needs to be rethought in terms of the philosophy implicit in modern science”. Albert Einstein concluded, "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God". Max Dimont wrote “Jews in searching for a new survival script need new relevant Jewish symbols”. Shedding belief in a personal God by espousing a God of the cosmos could be a new relevant symbol. Many Jews (and non-Jews too) think this way but never articulate it and never ponder its power. Our history has shown us to be a leader in many philosophical things. Isn’t is time for Judaism - the theologians, rabbis and laity in concert - to once again steal the march by discarding all literal interpretation of the miraculous events of the bible, in fact, miracles of any sort, and by relinquishing all belief in a personal God? In so doing will we not bring the Sh’ma into the 21st century? Alan Sapowith La Jolla, November ‘08 BIBLIOGRAPHY/REFERENCESAbout half of this writing is mine, the rest has been excerpted from various sources. In order to repeat the thoughts of the Rabbis and scholars discussed I have copied sentences and paragraphs verbatim from the sources listed below. I hope that in copying, rearranging, or re-writing these data I have not changed or shaded their meaning. Those portions containing quotes are, as proffered, quotes. The interpretations are all mine, so is the main theme, and so are the errors.I make no claims as an author. Perhaps I have served more as a redactor. The sources are arranged in relative importance to this paper. “Choices in Modern Jewish Thought”, Eugene B. BorowitzDrawn on heavily, especially the discussions of Mendelssohn, Cohen, Baeck, and Kaplan “The Disappearance of God” changed to “The Hidden Face of God”, Richard Elliott Friedman “Who Wrote the Bible”, Richard Elliott Friedman "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought", Ernst Mayr, Harvard University, Scientific American July 00, pg 82-83, “The Arithmetics of Mutual Help”, Martin Novak, Robert May, Karl Sigmund, Scientific American, June 1995, Pg 76-81 “The Dynamics of Social Dilemmas”. Bglance & Huberman, Scientific American, March 04, Pg 76 “A Book of Jewish Concepts”, Philip Birnbaum “’Basic values in Jewish religion”, Mordecai Kaplan “Dynamic Judaism”, Mordecai Kaplan, by Emanual Goldsmith“The Jewish Reconstructionist Papers”, Mordecai Kaplan Encyclopedia Judaica, at UCSD “Jerusalem”, Moses Mendelssohn “Jews, God and History” Max Dimont “The March of Folly”, Barbara Tuckman George Will, SD Union Sept 1, 02 “Not only is the universe stranger than we know, it is stranger than we can know”, Scientific American Sept 99 pg. 89 Late in life Einstein concluded, "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God". Hawking's space-time continuum -early chapter time starts/ends with big bang/crunch “The four dimensions of paradise”, Rabbi Samuel Penner “Cracking the Code”, Jon Entine, Reform Judaism, Spring Issu
We have never lost any freedoms as a result of loosing wars and never will, anyone that thinks they could occupy this country would be a complete idiot, all we have to do is wait and the government will succeed in destroying the country and then who knows what will happen.
LEVITICUS 18:22
8-30-2008
If Leviticus ( "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.") had been directed by a supernatural all knowing "God" he would have known what we have observed over the years that there is no exact cutoff point between a man and a woman. We now know scientifically that there is a distribution (neither male or female, commonly called homosexual) between the sexes and in that distribution natural persons are neither male or female but with characterics of each. Leviticus was directed as the other writers of what we now call the Bible by his own observations and what HE thought was an abomination. Somehow he must have experienced the love for people of the same sex and the fact that they experienced a sexual act between the two people, otherwise he would have never written about those sexual acts. The all knowing God would have also known about the distribution and never called it an abomination, otherwise it would have looked like a mistake in the "creation". obviously this part of nature has been with us for a long time and the church can preach as much as they want about the abomination and it will do no good as with other irrational "ideas" they have.
As with all writings by man the personal influence that goes in the writings can cause other people to act on those writings and irrational decisions are made because of a need to BELIEVE. It is difficult sometimes to separate fact from fiction but that is the requirement of the thinking person and without that reasoning we are led astray from rational thinking. Take for example the president Bush a demonstrated IDIOT.
ROD GALLOWAY
1340 H ST.
RAMONA, CA. 92065
760 789 1333
In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox
Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and
cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following response is an
open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by a US resident, which was posted on the
Internet. It's funny, as well as informative:
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law.
I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge
with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual
lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states
it to be an abomination ... End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of
God's Laws and how to follow them.
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female,
provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine
claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify?
Why can't I own Canadians? 2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7.
In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her? 3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of Menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense. 4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing
odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the
odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them? 5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him
myself, or should I ask the police to do it? 6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination,
Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can
you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination? 7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect
in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have
to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here? 8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around
their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How
should they die? 9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves? 10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops
in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different
kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme
a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole
town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to
death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their
in-laws? (Lev. 20:14) I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable
expertise in such matters, so I'm confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging. Your adoring fan.
James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus, Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education University of Virginia
(It would be a damn shame if we couldn't own a Canadian :)
Bush, Rice Express Concern for Afghan, a muslim prosecution for changing to christianity
Last Updated:03-23-06 at 7:25AM
President Bush called on Afghanistan to respect the religious freedom of an Afghan citizen on trial for his life for converting from Islam to Christianity."We expect them to honor the universal principle of freedom," Bush said in a statement in Wheeling, W.Va., preceding a speech on Iraq. "I'm troubled when I hear, deeply troubled when I hear, the fact that a person who converted away from Islam may be held to account."While not demanding that the trial be stopped and the defendant released, Bush said he wanted to make sure that "people are protected in their capacity to worship."Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice followed up with a meeting with Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, whose government is an ally of the United States in the war on terror.She told him she was deeply troubled by the case and called the prosecution "contrary to universal democratic values," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.Rice also told Abdullah that those values include freedom of religion, which the United States fought for in Afghanistan and elsewhere, McCormack said.And she told the foreign minister that the case ran contrary to the Afghan constitution.The statements by Bush and Rice toughened the U.S. stance in a controversy that has spread beyond South Asia, evoking statements of concern, for instance, in Germany and Italy.On Tuesday, administration officials expressed respect for Afghanistan's sovereignty while also registering their concern over the case.The case involves a 41-year-old Afghan man, Abdul Rahman, who converted from Islam and was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian. The conversion is a crime under Afghanistan's Islamic laws.Abdullah made no statement after his meeting with Rice, which was not listed on her public schedule.Here for strategic talks, Abdullah said Tuesday he hoped "through our constitutional process there will be a satisfactory result." He did not say whether he thought the defendant would be found innocent.On Wednesday, the Afghan embassy responded to expressions of concern with a statement saying the Kabul government "is fully aware of and pursuing the best way to resolve Mr. Rahman's case judicially.""It's too early to draw a conclusion about the punishment," the statement said.But it said Rahman's mental fitness was being evaluated by the judicial system and that results may end the proceedings.Michael Cromartie, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said in a statement he had written to Bush to express concern about the trial and the threatened execution of Rahman.Cromartie told the president that the prosecutor had called Rahman "a microbe (who) should be cut off and removed from the rest of Muslim society and should be killed."The Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a statement calling for Rahman's release. "Religious decisions should be matters of personal choice, not a cause for state intervention," the Muslim civil liberties group said.
The laws of the land contradict the natural laws about human needs and wants.
Today nudity is prohibited in public places and showing parts of the body will result in arrest and imprisonment. You will also be tagged for life as an sex offender. Showing the natural parts of the body has become a crime, showing sexual intercourse in public is a crime, when that action is how we propagate the earth with mankind. It is ok to have pictures of the sexual intercourse something we incorporate into the Constitution as free speech. The very act is prohibited and the children must learn about it on the street and thru friends when they become of age that causes the hormones to rush towards reproduction.
Early in our history the common age for marriage was when the female munestrated and that was the time she could concept and have a child. Today that action will land you in jail and become a sex offender for life. Multiple marriges also was a common thing to do but many people have decided that the law must apprehend those that engage in that kind of practice and jail is the result for the offender.
WHAT IF THE WORLD DIDN’T HAVE RELIGION??
6-26-2007
Can you imagine what kind of a world it would be if we didn’t have religion?? We would grow up only knowing a realistic world, not the fantasy world religion puts us in soon after birth. Shortly after birth we learn to say prayers to an unknown “god”, blessing friends and relatives and asking for all the good things to be delivered for free. Realizing the good things are really delivered by the fictitious persons like the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, Santa Clause, and others in different religions than Christianity. When in trouble asking for good results, when the results are solely dependent on your own efforts and others in the real world.
Without religion it would be difficult to tell the difference between people only their appearance and I wonder if we would fight wars based on the appearance of others?
The taxes on people of religion are great when they have to support both religion and government. My taxes for government is considerably less than the 10% expected for religion and a lot of the government taxes is used to fight wars that are concerned about religion. The overhead would be reduced considerably and that money could go to improve the world situation.
When you live in a fantasy world facing reality is difficult to accept and other means are used such as drugs to face the realities of life.
----- An Obituary printed in the London Times........
"Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; life isn't always fair; and maybe it was my fault. Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when political correctness became the "in thing" and the well-intentioned but overbearing "Human Rights laws" were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate, teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch, and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition. Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Aspirin to a student but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault. Common Sense finally gave up the will to live after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust, his wife, Discretion, his daughter, Responsibility his son, Reason.
He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers: I know my rights, I want it now, someone else is to blame, and I'm a victim
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing."
And, I'm not even a Republican!
Date: Saturday, March 14, 2009, 10:31 AM
Here's the opinion piece from Margaret Bengs I referred to at our last meeting, I hope you enjoy it. Could we discuss including this piece somehow in an upcoming newsletter, on the website or even in the weekly newsletter to school parents? See you on the 31st!
Catholic schools swamped by secular tide
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By Margaret A. Bengs Special to The Bee
Published: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 - 12:00 am Page 19A Last Modified: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 - 7:49 am
The announcement that Loretto High School, the Catholic school that has educated Sacramento girls since 1955, will close in June – unless a newly launched effort by parents and the Diocese of Sacramento to save it succeeds – is a microcosm of the steady crumbling of our religious institutions under the weight of rampant secularism and economic strains.
Catholic school enrollment in the Diocese of Sacramento has now dropped eight years in a row and has been dropping nationally for decades.
We can no longer operate under the modern delusion that the weakening of our faith-based institutions will have no consequence on our public life. In fact, these institutions provide the guideposts that help us advance the common good and halt dysfunctions in the social order.
Catholic schools are islands of refuge in a sea of secularism that are helping us preserve our spiritual and moral heritage. The loss of such a school is the loss of a small community, but one that shapes the minds and hearts of its students in ways that will last a lifetime.
As a graduate of San Luis Rey Academy, a Catholic girl’s high school adjacent to Mission San Luis Rey, also now sadly closed, the images of innocence and respect for scholarship forever etched in my mind are so different from what many children in public school see today.
Instead of the below-knee, checkered blue and brown pleated skirts with crisp white blouses that we wore, in today's public schools, we see hip-hugging pants and purple hair.
Instead of nuns clothed in long black habits modeling service and selflessness, a local teacher is accused of sending lewd text messages with sexual photos to two students.
Public school students used to be exposed to themes of virtue and character. McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader, for example, taught in public schools a century ago, while not endorsing a particular religion, acknowledged, as did our nation's founders, the importance of religion to a civilized society. "Religion is a social concern," it stated, "not merely a private affair," for it is "the best support of the virtues and principles, on which the social order rests." Erase all thought of a supreme being from a community, it predicted, "and selfishness would absorb the whole man. Appetite, knowing no restraint, would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws." Since then, these lessons have been swept away with the modern judiciary-endorsed sterilization of public schools from teaching moral values.
Replacing faith-based solutions to community problems is now most often a government remedy. Yet, while government welfare and other social programs can offer material help, they cannot answer the deeper human needs. And their burdensome costs often deplete families of resources they would have had to meet the challenges themselves.
To those who believe we can divorce spiritual influences from the public square without consequence, let us ask: Are we better off today than we were in the 1950s, when Loretto was established, and when religious education and vocations were a stronger and more vibrant part of our community? When Hollywood portrayed the importance of religion to community life, and when a weekly program by Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen actually aired on mainstream media? One look at today's crime,
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 10:01:39 -0800 (PST)
To: undisclosed recipients:
Subject: Get On The Bus Time again... Can you help a child stay united with a parent?
Prison Ministry friends and familyOur first Team meeting is scheduled for Feb 27 th 10:00 @ the Rock Church Room 253. We will be going over the program and just like last year be nominating coordinators for each faucet of the event. For those of you not familiar with what GOTB(GET ON THE BUS) is here is a brief summary of some heart breaking facts. Here is your opportunity to really Do Something!Get On The Bus brings children and their guardians/caregivers from throughout the state of California to visit their mothers and fathers in prison. An annual event, Get On The Bus offers free transportation for the children and their caregivers to the prison, provides travel bags for the children, comfort care bags for the caregivers, a photo of each child with his or her parent, and meals for the day (breakfast, snacks on the bus, lunch at the prison, and dinner on the way home)— all at no cost to the children’s family. On the bus trip home, following a four-hour visit, each child receives a teddy bear with a letter from their parent and post-event counseling. Without this program it would be financially impossible for the families to make the trip.Children with a parent in prison are usually cared for by relatives, often grandparents. Many caregivers are unable to make the drive due to distance or expense. Get On The Bus offers a priceless opportunity––a mother’s touch, a father’s hug, a family photo, a private conversation and a connection with hope and healing.•An estimated 856,000 children in California have a parent currently involved in California’s adult criminal justice system, nearly 9% of the state’s children. •One in 5 of these children have witnessed their parent’s arrest.•Police and courts do not regularly inquire at the time of arrest or sentencing whether a prisoner has children. What happens to these kids .•60% of parents in state prison report being held over 100 miles from their children.•We believe that families are torn apart by the current policies of the criminal justice system leaving behind children who become the hidden victims of crime.•In 1999, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 54% of mothers and 57% of fathers in state prisons reported never having had a single visit from their children.•Children’s odds of delinquency increase dramatically when visits with their incarcerated parent are denied.•Children who are allowed regular visits with their incarcerated parent demonstrate better emotional and social adjustment; they can be assured they are loved and that their parents have not abandoned them by choice.•Reguleas far from the families of mothers and fathers in prison, and the children lack the means to visit their parents. As a result, more than half of the children with a parent in prison never see them. •We believe that all children have the right to speak with, see and touch their parent no matter where the parent is. The child still loves there mom and dad. •We believe that families and children are essential partners for rehabilitation and re-entry.•Therefore, GOTB believes that it is imperative to unite children with their parents in prison and create greater public awareness about their plight. I hope to see MANY of you there and with a willing servants heart!--Latisha Zamora(619) 210-3522 cellLuke 10:2 Then He said to them, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.Join us on Facebook! Look for "Rock Church Prison Ministryar visits between children and their incarcerated parent lower rates of recidivism for the parent and improves family reunification following the parent’s release.•Prisons are often located in isolated ar
LAST REVISED 7-7-2010
MAN WROTE THE RELIGION OF THE DAY
7-1-2008
The question is what would be left of religion if the influences of man were taken away?? The result of that considered then add the actions of man and what do you have left? The answer to the questions are respectively nothing and chaos. THE POINT IS THAT MAN HAS ALWAYS MADE UP RELIGION when it was necessary to maintain order or to capitalize on the weakness of people. That it turns out to be the biggest scam ever put to mankind in the history of the world.
ALONG WITH SUPERSTITIONS RELIGION IS JUST ANOTHER SUPERSTITION THAT IS A NATURAL NEED FOR THE POPULATION JUST AS THE FACT THAT THE PUBLIC ABIDES BY SUPERSTITIONS AND IT BECOMES PART OF THEIR DAILY LIVES.
I AM A SLOW LEARNER AND I HAVE HAD THIS IDEA SOMEONE SHOULD BE WRITING ABOUT RELIGION AND ITS PLACE IN OUR LIVES AND ABOUT POLITICS AND RELIGION AND IT FINALLY CAME TO ME LIKE “EURIKA”, SO I WRITE ABOUT RELIGION.
THE DOUBLE SPEAK WHICH IS EVERYWHERE SAYS WE SHOULD MAINTAIN A SEPERATION BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND STATE, BUT WHEN YOU LOOK AT ALL THAT GOES ON WITH THE GOVERNMENT YOU FIND THE TWO ARE FIRMLY LOCKED TOGETHER. WE PASS LAWS THAT ARE FROM RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS LIKE SAME SEX MARRIAGES, PROSTITUTION, DRUG LAWS, possession of drugs, POLIGAMY, AGE OF CONSENT, BLUE LAWS, NO TAXING OF CHURCHES, OF COURSE, GOD IN THE PLEDGE, GOD ON THE MONEY, NUDITY, many victimless crimes and many other laws but the list is long and we will never get out from under the power of the church in government.
This is not about any particular church and it is not meant to discourage you about your religion because if that were the case I could be arrested for causing a revolt and I worry about the results when everyone ditched their religion, chaos would be wide spread so I want to reassure you to keep your religion and understand that nothing is going to happen as a result of your thinking.
Man has needed religion since the beginning of time and that is not going to change because of some writings, it is in bread and irreversible.
7-24-2009
Religion is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the human race closely followed by governments and their control of the people. With all respect to my bible beating friends we must at some time GET REAL or in other words face up to reality and quit living in a fantasy world. The human race has come a long way since the “beginning”. Today after billions of years of the universe development and after 2000 years of recent human development people still use writings that were done at the beginning of the written history, at least at a time when something was written and used those writings to determine the way life should be lived today. Written by someone with little education and if they were writing today no one would pay any attention to what they had written. At that time there was no science and no rules or laws to live by, ignorance was everywhere, they thought the world was flat and even today people still think the world is flat, chaos was everywhere and the people needed a god to “protect” them and answer questions about the afterlife, so they wrote one into the documents of the day, one guy had the rules written in stone (only 10 rules) according to the bible and he forgot to put in the most important rule for living and that is “DO NO HARM TO OTHERS”, the world today would be much better off with that rule, today the people still have the same needs; the people that could write probably ruled the masses and the writings were the laws of the land and all they had to do was say that god directed the writings and who could prove them wrong? God existed in many of the writings, doing all kinds of supernatural things but since that time the God has become very quiet for some reason. In large populations something had to be done to control the masses and writing on paper was all that was necessary to become the law of the land. Even today when this country was founded we had no laws and since the governments were formed the politicians have written thousands of laws on a yearly basis to control and limit the freedoms of the people. At that time all the people that had migrated to the country were trying to escape religious persecution so all were religious and God was written into the documents of the day. The founding fathers were Deist, they believed there was a god but avoided the Christian religion and a feeble attempt to keep religion out of the government was not solid enough and today the religion is everywhere in the government. “In God we trust” was even printed on buildings and the money, but what could you expect all were deeply religious. Back then things that were written was stories and the gods, even the stories about Jesus was written about other gods with the Egyptians and the god Horus and many other times about gods in the middle East, all had the same life style as Jesus but occurred many years prior to the time of the so called Jesus. So the Christian religions copied the ancient religions and wrote Jesus in as the current GOD.
This countries constitution assumes a separation of religion and the state but the religious lawmakers keep wedging religion into the thousands of laws they write each year, both federal and state. Examples are the control of women’s bodies, abortion, prostitution, marriage, homosexual behavior, treatment of crimes, they don’t know how to correct people’s behavior so they use archaic means and put people that disobey the laws in prison and the death penalty, they quit burning offenders at the stake for being witches, I wonder why? Fact is they do not know how to correct human behavior when the perpetrator disobeys the “laws of the land”.
We are deceived by many writings, laws, traditions, and the result is “double speak” where we are told one thing and they do another. Like the police are supposed to “protect” us but in fact they don’t protect, the fire department is supposed to put out fires but the structure or wild fires simply burn themselves out and they pour good water on the embers. We preach that the military protects the country but the fact is they have never protected this country, except during the revolutionary war with Great Briton, they are usually fighting in some other country but we have little to fear for this country is well protected by our large borders and no country would try and invade. Don’t forget “we have nothing to fear but fear itself”, good line by Winston.
We preach peace, but we have started or engaged in more wars than any country, killing more people even our own soldiers and destroying infrastructure in other countries with money that we borrow from the communist Chinese, Communism which we have all been brainwashed into believing was BAD and now they own us. We are deceived in many ways thru brainwashing, double speaking
As best that you can tell religion and governments don’t mix well as the founders thought, after all that is why they came to this country to escape the religious persecution by the government in those European countries. The founders were deist a belief in God based on reason rather than revelation and involving the view that God has set the universe in motion but does not interfere with how it runs. Deism was especially influential in the 17th and 18th centuries. They believed a god created all but that is as far as they believed.
Man has always needed a “god” and all civilizations have had at least one. Man has an inbred need to have a life after death and a need to avoid what really happens to the person after death. Reality is a state to be avoided and mankind has elected to live in an artificial, supernatural, fantasy lifestyle and the writings of the bible or the Koran and other descriptions of religious lifestyles that provide the guidance for that lifestyle. People blindly follow the writings and demand others do the same.
The purveyors of these ancient writings are today’s preachers that use all the media to assure you are touched and fearful if you do not conform and accept the religion they put forth. The media is of course the churches where the participants can gather in a very social atmosphere. You are captured by the rigorous rituals that they have invented to pull you into the “flock”. The other media is the radio, television, the songs they sing are very enticing and the atmosphere is very conducive to your meditating and the feeling of relief when the services are over. Bach was well trained in writing religious music that still exists today. That is what he did for a living and each week he would come up with another composition; the church supported his large family for a long time.
The repetitious preaching, week to week, is a routine for brainwashing the individual to be a real believer, along with the icons and music, it is all very enticing and the inductive person is captured in the mood of the day. After all look at all the people, friends, relatives and people you don’t even know that take up the teachings for FACT. The churches start early during childhood to indoctrinate the child about religion and puts the fear of Hell into his brain to convince him that religion is a necessary way of life.
Being “born again” is a famous expression that a convert feels after becoming overwhelmed with the religious experience. These motivational speakers that inspire the public are similar to the carnival barker or a television salesman selling vacuum cleaners. They are the spiritual authority and they are responsible for leading the pack. They promise life after death even when they have no more proof of that event than the writer that dreamed it up and wrote it down years ago. They can also assure you that if you don’t “believe” your sole will rest in hell and you must be within the religion that they preach and not a follower of another religion. The Muslim religion does not allow switching religious beliefs and they will execute the person that exercises that right. Most of the wars are fought over religious beliefs that say our religion is the true religion and anyone that does not believe that is wrong.
The churches are adorned with various religious icons and in some cases idols that are an artist rendering of a character in the bible. The idols are “prayed” to as if they were the God. Some churches have “holy” water that the preacher has blessed and that makes it holy. The churches are very ornate and a standout in the community but remember they pay no taxes and they level a tax on the participants, normally 10% of your gross salary in order to pay for the cost of maintaining the church, including the salaries of the people employed by the church.
The public is very susceptible to scams and there are many people that are smart enough to initiate the scams, just watch the television and radio that the public listens to including religion which blast away 7/24 sending the word of the “gospel” to the people in need and in like kind the people send in money to keep the messages coming, so it is a self fulfilling prophecy. The public is not educated well enough to avoid the scams and until it is no longer profitable for the scammers to exist we will need more and better education.
PONZI SCHEMES
Ponzi schemes are a popular for separating money from the public. The scheme is to promise something in return that is better than anything they would normally get and of course the promises could never be met, but people are both gullible and greedy. With that combination they are bound to appeal to a large amount of people. The end result is the investment falls flat and does not produce the results promised. The churches use the same technique to support the ongoing effort to win more people so they can collect more with the end goal of having a life after death in a heaven that someone invented many years ago because of the weakness in the human physic and the fact that man was very much in need of knowing what was going to happen after death, the biggest mystery. The Muslim religion promises sex after death with virgins, a wish that should never be put on the human being. Better to have an experienced woman that would be more pleasureful but that appeals to the masses. Ponzi probably got the idea from the religious community, which demonstrates the gullibility of the public on a daily basis.
Other religions are more realistic like the buddist that try and live the life after the teachings of Budda. Buddhism
Buddhism's core beliefs
BUDDA sat under the fig tree and contemplated how life should be and that is how the religion came to be. It has since been embellished by the leaders of that church and today the following is how the core of the religion is practiced.
Sponsored link.
Core beliefs of Buddhism:
Buddhism, like most of the great religions of the world, is divided into a number of different traditions. However, most traditions share a common set of fundamental beliefs.
One fundamental belief of Buddhism is often referred to as reincarnation -- the concept that people are reborn after dying. In fact, most individuals go through many cycles of birth, living, death and rebirth. A practicing Buddhist differentiates between the concepts of rebirth and reincarnation. In reincarnation, the individual may recur repeatedly. In rebirth, a person does not necessarily return to Earth as the same entity ever again. He compares it to a leaf growing on a tree. When the withering leaf falls off, a new leaf will eventually replace it. It is similar to the old leaf, but it is not identical to the original leaf.
After many such cycles, if a person releases their attachment to desire and the self, they can attain Nirvana. This is a state of liberation and freedom from suffering.
The Three Trainings or Practices:
These three consist of:
Sila: Virtue, good conduct, morality. This is based on two fundamental principles:
The principle of equality: that all living entities are equal.
The principle of reciprocity: This is the "Golden Rule" inChristianity -- to do onto others as you would wish them to do onto you. It is found in all major religions.
Samadhi: Concentration, meditation, mental development. Developing one's mind is the path to wisdom which in turn leads to personal freedom. Mental development also strengthens and controls our mind; this helps us maintain good conduct.
Prajna: Discernment, insight, wisdom, enlightenment. This is the real heart of Buddhism. Wisdom will emerge if your mind is pure and calm.
The first two paths listed in the Eightfold Path, described below, refer to discernment; the last three belong to concentration; the middle three are related to virtue.
The Four Noble Truths:
The Buddha's Four Noble Truths explore human suffering. They may be described (somewhat simplistically) as:
Dukkha: Suffering exists: (Suffering is real and almost universal. Suffering has many causes: loss, sickness, pain, failure, the impermanence of pleasure.)
Samudaya: There is a cause for suffering. (It is the desire to have and control things. It can take many forms: craving of sensual pleasures; the desire for fame; the desire to avoid unpleasant sensations, like fear, anger or jealousy.)
Nirodha: There is an end to suffering. (Suffering ceases with the final liberation of Nirvana (a.k.a. Nibbana). The mind experiences complete freedom, liberation and non-attachment. It lets go of any desire or craving.)
Magga: In order to end suffering, you must follow the Eightfold Path.
The Five Precepts:
These are rules to live by. They are somewhat analogous to the second half of the Ten Commandments in Judaism and Christianity -- that part of the Decalogue which describes behaviors to avoid. However, they are recommendations, not commandments. Believers are expected to use their own intelligence in deciding exactly how to apply these rules.
Do not kill. This is sometimes translated as "not harming" or an absence of violence.
Do not steal. This is generally interpreted as including the avoidance of fraud and economic exploitation.
Do not lie. This is sometimes interpreted as including name calling, gossip, etc.
Do not misuse sex. For monks and nuns, this means any departure from complete celibacy. For the laity, adultery is forbidden, along with any sexual harassment or exploitation, including that within marriage. The Buddha did not discuss consensual premarital sex within a committed relationship; Thus, Buddhist traditions differ on this. Most Buddhists, probably influenced by their local cultures, condemn same-sex sexual activity regardless of the nature of the relationship between the people involved.
Do not consume alcohol or other drugs. The main concern here is that intoxicants cloud the mind. Some have included as a drug other methods of divorcing ourselves from reality -- e.g. movies, television, the Internet. 1
Those preparing for monastic life or who are not within a family are expected to avoid an additional five activities:
6. Taking untimely meals. 7. Dancing, singing, music, watching grotesque mime. 8. Use of garlands, perfumes and personal adornment. 9. Use of high seats.10. Accepting gold or silver.
There is also a series of eight precepts which are composed of the first seven listed above, followed by the eighth and ninth combined as one. "Ordained Theravada monks promise to follow 227 precepts!" 3
The Eightfold Path:
The Buddha's Eightfold Path consists of:
Panna: Discernment, wisdom:
1) Samma ditthi Right Understanding of the Four Noble Truths
2) Samma sankappa: Right thinking; following the right path in life
Sila: Virtue, morality:
3) Samma vaca: Right speech: no lying, criticism, condemning, gossip, harsh language
4) Samma kammanta Right conduct by following the Five Precepts
5) Samma ajiva: Right livelihood; support yourself without harming others
Samadhi: Concentration, meditation:
6) Samma vayama Right Effort: promote good thoughts; conquer evil thoughts
7) Samma sati Right Mindfulness: Become aware of your body, mind and feelings
8) Samma samadhi Right Concentration: Meditate to achieve a higher state of consciousness
References:
Guy Newland, Untitled essay at: http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/
Bhikkhu Bodhi, "The Noble Eightfold Path. The Way to the End of Suffering," Buddhist Information, at: http://www.buddhistinformation.com/
Thomas Knierim, "The Precepts" at: http://www.thebigview.com/
Copyright © 1996 to 2009 by Ontario Consultants on Religious ToleranceLatest update: 2009-AUG-16Author: B.A. Robinson
The church is very influential in the politics of the country, any country, and they lobby for laws that they think the population should follow. These laws usually restrict the population in many areas. Typically laws that concern abortion, marriage, holidays, prostitution, child pornography, alcohol, consumption and the days it can be sold, nudity and other laws too numerous to mention here. They do not think the individual can determine how to use their body and they want to control how the body is used regardless of a victimless crime.
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This blind following has resulted in the way we make our laws and morals, the majority rules and it is difficult to change the way things are done especially when the majority have been driven by the rules of the religion.
Once the public mentality accepts the ways of religion other irrational things show up that affect governments, we continue to have a deficit and borrow from countries that are more financially able to handle their finances than we are and most are Communist, Muslim and others. The bottom line is that we are stealing from the lenders with the false promise that we will repay the loans. With the direction this country is going and no plans to repay the loans we will default soon and become bankrupt. The politicians know they are only in office for a short time and do not have to account for deficit spending. We never seem to justify the expenditures and when we do it is acceptable to the masses because of the propaganda that is put out by the agency under consideration.
The military “needs” to fight wars and the people agree with the propaganda that enables the military to spend vast amounts of money doing practically nothing but under the guise of “protecting our freedom” when our freedom was never under attack. The propaganda was slanted towards “our freedom was under attack and they want to kill us” and the gullible accepted it without question. The foot soldier (the pawn of the generals) blindly follows the orders and gives his life for patriotism and all the other reasons he may have to join the military, money for the financial rewards are much higher today and the false idea that they are a volunteer military which puts them in a mercenary category, and maybe for just a simple reason to go and shoot someone. They can break the laws of the USA in foreign countries and not be prosecuted. Committing murder is a common thing during “war”. War crimes are seldom punished especially when we are the ones doing the criminal acts. The CIA was established especially so we had an organization the could act with impunity and do the biding of the government under the umbrella established that the CIA was not accountable for its actions. As a result they assonate, start wars and whatever is required regardless of the laws of the land. After all we are a nation that rules by law!!
When the terrorist attack because we have infiltrated their land and try to spread Democracy and we call it a WAR. Terrorist does not invade other countries they are merely political organizations that use bombs to elaborate their point rather than voting. But we like to make war and that has turned out to be a good excuse for starting the wars. They want us out of their land and stop supporting Israel, so are you going to start a war and spend American lives and trillions of dollars in a futile attempt to TRY and stop that political outcome??
The propaganda effort seems to be we will do something like invade other countries and condemn others for terrorizing our country??
Other bureaucracies use the same type of propaganda to justify their existence; the police always indicate they are “protecting” the public when they have never been able to protect you. You must protect yourself and having a concealed weapon may be the best protection if the person that is about to commit bodily harm, he should know that you may be carrying a gun or something else to defend yourself. That is protection. The police force along with the fire department is reactionary groups that respond after the fact that a crime has been committed. They do FAIR work apprehending criminals after the public has identified or fingered the suspect but many get away. Part of the propaganda is how the crime rate has decreased because of their efforts, when they have nothing to do with most crimes, murder, robbery, physical abuse, traffic laws, and prostitution and on and on. Remember they are well armed and when they decide to shoot you they use many rounds to perform the act. The reasons for shooting you are that they fear for their life when everyone knows that everyone should fear for their life when they venture onto the streets and they are always justified in the shootings by the bureaucracy that they are a part of. Once a person is apprehended and convicted he needs to admit remorse for some reason but the courts need to hear the remorse statement and crying is effective and the defense lawyer must be able to teach the defendant how to be remorseful.
Illogical conditions exist with laws about prostitution, immigration, drugs, marriage, controls on the personal body, abortion, death, and how to treat “criminals”.
Punishment is an archaic method because we don’t know how to handle the people that commit “crimes” so the old technique is to put them in jail. No attempt is made to correct the situation which may be an easy thing to do but jail is an easier way to handle the “law” breakers. Similar to burning at the stake for “witches”. And after the jails are filled and resources are gone they let the “non-violent” offenders go free, real smart and still no way to correct the real problem. We are a “nation of laws” and we cannot enforce the laws.
Today when budgets are threatened because of the “poor economy” governments that is inept and not capable of proper governing lay off the blame to others and never take responsibility for their ineptness.
This country is a great country and the only regret is that it could have been much greater if we had spent our resources better and really protected the public.
This is not just Christianity but all religions from the religions of the aborigines thru Islam and Christianity. Mankind has a weakness in the makeup of the human character that causes him to want to avoid reality and develop a faith in the supernatural from which you cannot demonstrate any realistic evidence. Religion promises a life after death that is unrealistic and no evidence was ever established to show the promises to be true, just faith. Now we have some proof that the deranged, mentally handicapped president Bush started the war with Iraq because God told him to invade. This caused thousands to be killed and maimed but has given the military a lead into a perpetual war along with the civilian corps (camp followers) that supports the war.
These superstitions have caused many faults in the world especially different religions that think they are the one true religion which has caused wars and people killing and discriminating against people of color or people that are “different” than me. Of all the superstitions only religion is the most destructive and represents a failure of the human to have peace, justice, and human rights. All of the things the “religions” profess to achieve. These different religions argue that they are the true religion when in fact neither have a basis in reality and the fight produced nothing, for how could you prove you are the one true religion when you don’t have a realistic reason for fact.
Superstitions cause humans to avoid reality and make bad laws that are unrealistic and cause man to condemn others and put them in prison and execute them for not living up to the artificial, arbitrary standards they have established. It is also a way to create bureaucracies, make a law that satisfies a lobbyist and then generate a bureaucracy that enforces that law. A great example of this is to create immigration laws that refuse to let seasonal workers (IN THE 50’s THE BRACERO PROGAM WORKED VERY WELL AND EVERYONE ACCEPTED IT) from foreign lands enter the country to do the necessary work and then have the border patrol arrest them when they come across the border "illegally" and put them in jail. This satisfies the border patrol and prison bureaucracies. Economics governs and trumps the unrealistic laws generated by lobbyist and the government. The immigration laws are apparently made to protect the American worker from foreign workers that are willing to do the work even when the American worker refuses to do the work so the farmer suffers from lack of labor to work the crops. The public has got so enthralled with the law that they will do anything to support the law, while refusing to obey other laws, another way of choosing racism as a way to downgrade the Mexican or foreign worker.
An example of how ridiculous the laws can be is driving traffic laws. Exceeding the speed limit never caused an accident BUT when coupled with an incompetent, irrational, irresponsible driver at any speed safety is jeopardized and collisions happen all the time, not because of speeding but because of the irresponsible driver at any speed. The laws are for exceeding the arbitrary limits and tickets that accompany fines are leveled by the police that have nothing to do with the REAL problem, the irresponsible driver. Problem is that it is nearly impossible to determine when a person will become irresponsible until after the fact they have caused an accident. So they write laws that do not answer the real problem and just result in revenue to the government. We lose two ways, the cost of the police and the fact they do nothing to curb the lawbreaker.
Stop signs are another irrational law that says you must come to a complete stop before proceeding. Years ago the traffic laws were quite different. The driver was supposed to be safe and sane. And that caused people to roll through the stop signs when they knew it was SAFE to proceed, the person on the right had the right of way when both arrived at the stop at the same time. Today the government gives tickets for not coming to a complete stop, regardless of the safety involved. Rolling thru the stop sign was given the name “a California stop”. As a result of these irrational laws that generate revenue and do nothing for driver’s safety many other laws are written that limit the freedom of the individual and generate large sums of money and do nothing for safety. The Highway Patrol (CHP) are responsible for generating tickets for traffic violations and will never come close to actually correcting the problem of the irresponsible driver and the effort is an expense that they cannot overcome with the tickets they generate. As they are writing the ticket thousands of people drive by exceeding the speed limit. People drive at the speed they think is safe regardless of the “limit” put out by the arbitrary limit the state thinks law should be enforced.
Laws that are written for the religious view are laws about marriage, homosexual behavior, which turns out to be homophobic, nudity, gambling, drinking alcohol, blue laws, given tax free benefits, prostitution, abortion, drugs the public uses drugs to escape reality much as they use religion, victimless crimes where no one was hurt as a result of your actions, just showing up at a venue could put you in jail, possession of drugs and/or drug parafanailia, the laws about liquor reaches to the point that having a drink can put you in jail, and today the law reaches into the bedroom, having child porn (whatever that is can cause you to be arrested and labeled a sex offender for the rest of your life) on your computer regardless of how it got in the machine, action against animals, the list goes on and on along with laws that don’t seem to be from a religious standpoint but always from the viewpoint that they want to control your every move. They want to control how you use your body. And above all we are supposed to separate the church from the government. God bless America and in God we trust did not happen, God did not bless this country but they keep saying those words, in the pledge of allegiance to the flag “one nation under God with liberty and justice for all” did not happen and is a lie, but they gloss over those facts and continue to repeat the lies. We should be a secular society and that would be the perfect role for government but the church is too deeply woven into the government. The patriotic songs stir up needs to be patriotic. The brainwashing that is used is to repeat the lines and sooner than later people will think it is true. The same technique happens in the churches around the world, keep telling the same story over and over and the people will soon believe it really happened. The bible stories happened over many years but the religion has put the happenings in the bible on a yearly basis. Each year on certain selected dates we celebrate a happening in the bible, Easter, Christmas, and then we add other patriotic days and Mothers and fathers days along with new years and Saint Pats day and the vendors sell on each of those days, something for the economy. Finally the idea is to keep repeating those events and the public will think they are real and think they really happened. Just more brainwashing.
We sentence people to arbitrary terms in different states for similar crimes. The federal crimes tend to be consistent but they are so smart they will sentence convicts to two life sentences served consecutively when the person is only expected to live less than ten years. Now the prisons are filled and the courts are demanding the release of prisoners that they have sentenced to jail because of overcrowding. (REAL SMART) The courts are so backlogged that civil cases are not given time in the courtroom. There is now some consideration for early release of “non-violent” criminals and some thoughts of really trying to rehabilitate the “criminal” which is a much better approach than lock them up and forget. Progress may still find a way in the illogical approaches of the past, but we have been doing this for hundreds of years.
We are introduced with superstitions practically from birth. The tooth fairy, Santa Clause, Easter bunny, and many others from other religions, all tilted to keep you close to believing the superstitions and finally about God, Heaven (for a life after death), hell, the devil and on and on. Then morals are introduced and rules to live by that were derived from ancient writings and enhanced and embellished by the leaders of the religions of the day. As a result of those teachings, laws are made that keep the populations on the straight and narrow. They are written by people that have greed and benefits to gain as a result under the guise of “protecting” the public. The result is usually a prison sentence or death. The sentences are arbitrary and do not correct the underlying problem.
These leaders of the religions are very good at convincing the public about the horrors of not following their direction. They use iconic methods, churches, and statutes, special clothing that supports their teachings. The religions then create iconic representations of these religious icons and sell the icons to the public another way they take money from the public. They are always in need of money to support various efforts that are godly ventures. Without paying taxes because they are exempt by the government that supports the religion they have amassed fortunes and continue to grow and influence the government. When the government subsidies the religion that makes them a part of and subservient to the government.
Other religions also depend on the supernatural, by teaching people about various after life benefits like being reborn as an animal or insect, called reincarnation and the Muslims that offer a life after death that is so attractive they commit suicide for the religion.
We make laws that we cannot enforce, hire police to enforce the laws, we lose two times. The police and fire departments think they control crime, but they are reactionary departments that react only when a crime has been committed and usually the citizens are responsible for fingering the culprit but the police take the benefit of finding the culprit. The fire department goes to fires that are well started and usually watch as the building burns to the ground along with tons of water that is poured on and does no good. Think volunteer fire departments and insurance which most owners have in order to rebuild the structure. Defensible space and let it burn, most efforts to “contain” a grass or wild fire is to watch and let it burn out. Sometimes structures are saved by the owners and the fire department but hardly worth the cost of the department and large aircraft that drop water and “retardant” and the fire burns thru the effort. You never hear commentators talk about kindling temperatures, but the aircraft continue to drop water and retardants only to have them turn into a mist and do little to reduce the kindling temperature and the fire continues to burn.
Seems we have the idea when something sounds derogatory to us we make a law against the idea and think it will go away.
We make laws about immigration that cannot be enforced and then complain about the fact that people break the laws and call them illegal’s, when in fact ALL people break the existing unenforceable laws on a daily basis and they do not call themselves illegal’s. So is it just another discrimination thing against the “illegals”? Seems so. They want the work we need the work done and we arrest them for entering the country to do the required work.
Many other “laws” are written that cause the police to chase their tails, such as traffic, prostitution (the oldest profession), people that need drugs are arrested for possession when these laws are driven by economics and will never be satisfied by the police but merely another bureaucracy that will always be used by the police to justify their existence. Most countries are legalizing the possession of small amounts of drugs; now the police will have to carry around a device to weigh drugs. We are making progress and that is to decriminalize possession laws, maybe in our lifetime. That will relieve the crowding of the prison population and relieve the courts, and give the police an opportunity to look after the really bad guys that do harm to others, which is what the real reason for having a police force.
Many items that are unlawful are and have to do with the human characteristic, over the ages the human developed characteristics that prevail today but a few people have decided that is not what “our” morals are supposed to be and a law is written to counter the human characteristic. A good point is that back in the recent history and in some countries today women were married when they started to menstruate or when they were able to bear a child and that was the norm. (See note at the end of this writing) Why would nature allow childbearing at that age if it was not OK? Today that action would land you in jail and label you as a sex offender for the rest of your life. Laws never allow a time for trying to correct the desire to impregnate the 12-13 year old; the only way they have to handle the problem is to put the offender in jail, which does nothing to solve the problem. Mutual consent is not a consideration. Brain washing, a technique used during the Korean War could be used to correct the problem. Multiple marriages long practiced by many people around the world are outlawed in this country but the practice goes on in many areas of the country and no harm is done but once a person is condemned for having more than one wife he is put in prison and no longer can provide for his family. Years ago and in many parts of the world multiple marriages was the norm. When two people want to get married they must be male and female, nothing happens when same sex mates want to get married except the Christians in this country think it is not right. Again NOTHING happens when the same sex marriage takes place but we have laws that prohibit the ceremony.
The legislatures write thousands of laws each year that limit and remove our freedoms. When the huge bureaucracy, the military starts a war based on propaganda that is finally “to protect our freedom” the people really think they are doing a good job, (support the military) but in fact they are just doing what they are trained for and that is to make war and the propaganda is to assure the public they are engaged to “protect our freedom”. The “new” volunteer military is formed by awarding the enlistee money ($40,000) and then teaching him to go shoot someone which he may already be ready to do or have a death wish which the military brass uses to recruit and then awarding large re-enlistment bonuses and you finally have a mercenary military and they want to maintain that status so it is necessary to continue the wars perpetually. The new recruit becomes a pawn in the military hierarchy that enables them to maintain a perpetual war. After he has had a good taste of what the military is about and the memory of shooting another human being they come home with P.T.S.S called Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, a condition that they cultivate and cause them to continue with useless lives and a burden to society. When they lose another war nothing changes except to mourn the lost lives of the military that the war consumed. Seems like when they lose the war we should lose some freedom but the most we lose is the war dead and maimed along with the huge costs of fighting the war that produced nothing. Today the military has decided after 8-9 years of shooting people in Afghanistan that they are losing the war and have decided to change the tactic so they can continue the campaign in that country. Remember when you are losing the argument the best strategy is to change the subject. Many past “insurgents” (Russians, British) into Afghanistan have left after not being able to effectively secure the country and rather than reading “lessons learned” and reading history we have to waste resources and lives to learn a new lesson. Today we are going to try and “protect” the Afghan people and a new agenda to spread Democracy, which in this country has degraded to a Plutocracy. (Nice thought, good luck) if we could do that it would be a nice thought but again we would gain nothing, but that is what we usually get for the military efforts. We should redirect those efforts to building railroads, flood control, electric automobiles and other infrastructures that would benefit the USA and the world.
We have never lost any freedoms as a result of loosing wars and never will, anyone that thinks they could occupy this country would be a complete idiot, history shows no one has ever tried, all we have to do is wait and the government along with religion will succeed in destroying the country and then who knows what will happen. But in order to perpetuate the militaristic within the country we need to spread fear to the American public that we are being attacked like the “Drums of War”.
The drug wars is another huge chase your tail exercise that rewards the “police” with a job but does nothing in correcting the problem, a public that cannot face the realistic world and seek mechanisms that allow them to escape realism. But it does provide employment for a large number of people that essentially never accomplish anything except making a few arrests and collecting the “illegal” drugs but the need trumps the law and the chase goes on.
The most recent boondoggle is the forming the huge bureaucracy the Transportation Security Agency which has now been in existence for close to 10 years and has yet to find a terrorist but millions of people every day are “inspected” before being allowed on the airlines. After someone has bypassed the TSA and found on the aircraft with a mostly harmless “bomb” the TSA starts a new program to intercept that kind of breach. The result is the effort is never replicated and they continue to chase their tails, a profession that is gaining support in many governmental bureaucracies.
A good place to add that most bureaucracies are dictatorial and do not report to the public in this “democracy”.
When it comes to spending “other people’s money” the government does that with exuberance. NASA our space GURU has assured that bureaucracy will live forever. When programs run lean and they cannot think of some good way to spend the taxpayer’s money they come up with ideas that are impractical and border on the impossible in order to perpetuate the organization and promote science. Going to the moon was an exercise that produced nothing and the thought of going again is a ridiculous idea. Couple that with the hair brained idea by D.F.G. Bush of going to Mars and you have a country that is currently bankrupt and borrowing money from the “Communist” Chinese government and others willing to throw away the future of our children because of ideas like, “I want to be a wartime president”, “spreading Democracy”, “protecting the American people” and on and on. Soon the interest on the debt will exceed the income and we won’t be able to pay the interest and will have to find someone to borrow the money from in order to pay just the interest and don’t even think about paying the trillions of principal debt.
There seems to be a bright side and that is the attendance at churches is declining in the better-educated areas of the USA.
The politicians in this country always seem to be “good” religious people and preach all the “good” they will bring to the office they are seeking but invariably they use the office to promote their own personal agenda and many times they break the laws they have vowed to uphold and have to be removed from the office either by elections or by impeachment. We have long hoped for honesty in public office and too many times been derailed and fallen into the pit of disrespect.
Is this a great country or what?? We have plenty of room for improvement but probably not in this lifetime. Maybe a revolution would correct the problem?
Write about DRUG WARS, CORRUPT POLITICIANS,
ROD
[Cool Teen Sites]
The Crazy-Quilt of Our Age of Consent Laws by Jonathan Dolhenty, Ph.D.
Copyright 1998 by The Center for Applied Philosophy, Sixes, Oregon. Originally appeared on The Radical Academy website and reproduced with permission. Dr. Dolhenty is executive director of The Center for Applied Philosophy.
Few people seem to be aware of the crazy quilt of our laws regarding the age of consent for sexual activity. Even fewer people seem to know anything about the historical background of the consent laws.The common law, from which America gets much of its precedents in the legal field, set the age of consent at age ten. In other words, participating in sexual activity with someone above the age of ten did not result in the crime of "statutory" rape or child molesting. The activity may have come under other statutory or informal social regulations, but anyone over the age of ten could consent to a sexual activity.During the latter part of the last century and the early part of the present one, attitudes towards sexual activity began to change in America and so did attitudes toward the age of consent. Californiawas one of the first states to raise the age of consent. It raised it from ten to fourteen in 1889 and then from fourteen to sixteen in 1897. Then, in 1913, California again raised it from sixteen to eighteen.A number of other states then joined the bandwagon and raised the age of consent including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New York, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Tennessee went the furthest: under Tennessee law, it was a felony to have sex with any woman under twenty-one.Under the new statutes the age of the male made no difference. If two sixteen year olds got involved in sexual activity, the boy was guilty of rape and the girl was officially an innocent victim. It was legally the same regardless of whether she was, in fact, an innocent victim or awilling and eager partner in "crime." The laws made teenage sex a serious crime for the males. It was a crime to take a woman's chastity, even if she gave it away. It was age discriminationat its best. The age of consent laws have never made any sense. The variances among the individual states are enormous and what would pass as a willing, consensual sexual encounter in one state is a serious crime with severe penalties in another.When I was a police officer, I was involved in a situation that illustrates the problem. The state in which I worked had the age of consent at eighteen. While I and another officer were on patrol oneFriday night, we made a pass through one of the local parks. We spotted an automobile parked in the middle of one of the single lanes that roamed throughout the park. The car, in fact, was blocking the roadway. We got out of the patrol car and approached the offending vehicle. We peered through the windows and spotted a couple in the back seat, naked as jaybirds, engaged in a sexual act. We tapped our flashlights on the back window, scaring the devil out of the occupants.We managed to convince the couple to get some clothes on and step out of the car. Since the couple looked rather young, we demanded some identification. The driver licenses they produced showed that they were from the next town, the boy was seventeen years old and the girl was eighteen. The girl was of legal age, and could give consent to the activity. The boy was underage, technically a "child," and could not give legal consent.In an interesting twist on a common situation, the boy was the "victim" in this case and the girl could be charged with anything from "statutory" rape to child molesting. She would be a sex offender andbe so marked for the rest of her life. She would have to register as a sex offender with the police department of any city she moved to throughout the state. In short, her life would be miserable. This would be so even though they both were in the same class in high school and had a boy-friend-girl-friend relationship.Neither the other police officer nor I could see us branding this girl as a rapist or child molester. The boy had been a willing "victim" even though the law said he couldn't give consent. Had they been married, which they could have been under the law, the act they wereengaging in would have been none of the police's business (except for the fact they were doing it in a public place). The boy could legally quit school (the age of consent for that was sixteen). The boy could legally enter the Marine Corps and defend his country in time of war (the age for that was seventeen with parental approval). He could, in short, have died for his country, but he was a "child" as far as the law was concerned and could not legally engage in sexual activity.So what did we do? My fellow officer and I gave the couple a traditional lecture on the dangers of what they were doing and particularly doing it in what constituted a public place. We put intothem what "fear of hell" we could and let them go home. That was the sensible thing to do. The information in this article and the graphs is assumed to be accurate as of 1995. The sources used to obtain the information are:The World Almanac, 1995;
Lawrence M. Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History (Basic Books, 1993); Peter McWilliams, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do (Prelude Press, 1993).Look at the age of consent for the state of New Mexico in the chart on the left below. 13! Does this mean the kids who live in New Mexico are much more mature and intelligent than the kids in the other states of our nation?I wonder why the kids in some states are considered mature enough to make decisions but in other states they are not? If a kid goes from Wisconsin to New Mexico, does he or she get "instant" maturity? If a boy or girl goes from New Mexico to Wisconsin, do they "instantly"become immature?Does any of this make sense? The graph at the right below gives the ages at which people can get married in the United States.There are some interesting things one finds in analyzing the graph: The boys and girls in California must be smarter and more mature than other kids in the country since they can get married at any age with parental consent.The kids in Hawaii must be considered more mature than other kids in the nation since they can get married at 16 without parental consent. Notice that a girl in Massachusetts can get married at 12 with parental consent and in New Hampshire at age 13. But in New Hampshire, she can't consent to sexual activity until she is 18. Does this mean she can't consent to sex even though she is married under the age of 18?In Mississippi, the boy must be 17 and the girl 15 to get married with parental consent. Isn't this age discrimination in violation of the civil rights laws?
EDITOR NOTE: The following chart appeared with the original article and is presented here for completeness. However, the most accurate information on the various ages of sexual consent are at http://www.ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm
E EVOLUTION, INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND TRANSPLANTATION
2-23-2006
Leave it to my grandson to ask me the “good” questions; they are the ones you either don’t know the answer to or thought no one would ever ask. Anyway the question was if I knew what the “Drake Equation” was? I had never heard about it so he told me generally what it was and after a Google and a Wikipedia.com the following results were shown:
The Drake equation states that:
Where:
N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which we might expect to be able to communicate
And
R* is the rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars which have planets
ne is average number of planets which can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl is the fraction of the above which actually go on to develop life
fi is the fraction of the above which actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc is the fraction of the above which are willing and able to communicate
L is the expected lifetime of such a civilization
This is just the number of civilizations that could be calculated by estimating (guessing) the seven variables in the equation and it seems likely it could be used for any galaxy.
Having just read in National Geographic analysis about how the earth’s civilization migrated from Africa about 200,000 years ago to the landmasses in the world it reminded me about the argument between Darwin’s theory of evolution and the intelligent design idea that has been put forth by the Christians in order to cover up their long held belief that the universe was only 5000 years old and everything was created in seven days. It always seemed to me a stretch to believe we evolved from a single celled “bug” or “animal”. There should be little doubt that since man has been on earth a giant evolution has taken place with man and it goes on today. Darwin also proved that the animals of the Galapagos evolved because of the changing environment. That proof leads others and Darwin to theorize that man evolved from a natural chemical process. Not wanting to believe we evolved from apes the Christians and others held to the writings of the Bible and finally to intelligent design after finding it difficult to explain the 5000 year theory.
An equally difficult to explain idea is that the entire living things on earth were transplanted here by extra-terrestrials. Don’t laugh it just as believable as the other theories, which can’t be proved. There is evidence that man has existed here on earth in some form for about 200,000 years ago which gives a starting point along with evidence that the earth is maybe 4.5 million years old. Suppose other civilizations could have existed a million years prior to them transplanting life on this planet it very likely they could have developed means to travel vast distances and had the technology to do the transplant knowing that evolution would take place and a new society would emerge with new characteristic. If the transplant was a common village they knew that thru mutations different races would evolve. There must have been more than one set of humans because with what we know today the inter breeding of relatives creates a weak line of humans, but that could have happened. Before the transplanting of humans the planet had to be prepared for the human to survive so a long time before man was transplanted all the vegetation had to be transplanted and then the animals transplanted and had to mature to the point that man and animal could survive.
Sound like a fairy tale well this theory is just as factual as the others because none of them can be proven and it is all speculation as how it all happened. Finally if the extra-terrestrials did the transplant here on earth, how or where did they develop??
The bottom line is that whichever way it happened nothing is going to happen as a result and the schools can teach whatever they like because again NOTHING is going to happen and we will never know how it all came about. This is very similar to thinking what happens after death, no one will ever know. There are many subjects that are argued today that result in nothing happening, typical are the “feel good laws”, border protection, policemen on horseback, the war on drugs, abortion, traffic laws (the people that pay attention to the laws are people interested in their own safety and do not need a law, the scofflaws do not care), ect, you get the idea, think about it!!!
Thanks to the Grandson Chet.
ROD GALLOWAY
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RAMONA, CA 92065
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20 Aug 2008 / Uncategorized
An Appeal to Firefighters, Present and Past from a retired FDNY Lieutenant
Fellow Firefighters, A great tragedy befell our community on September 11, 2001, an unprecedented 343 deaths in the line of duty. As horrible as that toll is, if there were a rational explanation for it, we could accept it and mourn. We all understood the risk we accepted when we took the oath of office, that chance might cut short our lives when we placed ourselves in harm’s way in the public’s service. This is what we are paid for and it is our honor. However, in short, the official explanation of the events of that day are not only insufficient, they are fantastic and cannot bear rational examination. We are asked to believe that on that day three structural steel buildings, which have never before in history collapsed because of fire, fell neatly into their basements at the speed of gravity, their concrete reduced to dust. We are asked to believe that jet fuel (kerosene) can melt steel. We are asked to believe that the most sophisticated air defense system in the world, that responded to sixty-eight emergencies in the year prior to 9-11 in less than twenty minutes allowed aircraft to wander about for up to an hour and a half. We are asked to believe that the steel and titanium components of an aircraft that supposedly hit the Pentagon “evaporated”. There is much, much more if anyone cares to look into it. Trade Tower #7 by itself is the “smoking gun”. Not hit by an aircraft, with only a few relatively small fires, it came down in a classic crimp and implosion, going straight into its basement, something only very precise demolition can accomplish, which takes days if not weeks to prepare. The 9-11 Commission didn’t even mention it, and F.E.M.A. actually stated they DIDN’T KNOW WHY IT COLLAPSED AND LEFT IT AT THAT. Brothers, I know that the implications of the above are hard, almost unthinkable, but the official explanation is utter nonsense, and three hundred and forty three murdered brothers are crying out for justice. Demand a genuine investigation into the events of September 11!
-Anton Vodvarka, Lt. FDNY (ret)
Lt. Vodvarka served on FDNY Ladder Co 26, Rescue Co. 3, Rescue Co. 1, Engine Co. 92, Ladder 82 and Ladder 101. He was awarded the Merit Class 1 award, the Prentice Medal.
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_____________________________________________________________________________________Erik Lawyer speaks at the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth press conference demanding a new investigation. Firefighters for 9-11 Truth strongly support AE911 Truth in securing a new investigation.Read more…
Click here to hear some of the witnesses and recordings NIST claims don’t exist._____________________________________________________________________________________N.F.P.A. 921 19.4.8.2.6 – ExtremismDuring an investigation, many things must be considered. Aside from the physical evidence, and witness testimony, suspect criminal history also must be analyzed. The investigation must include past history and the Modus Operandi, “M.O.” for short.
N.F.P.A. 921 19.4.8.2.6 – Extremism addresses terrorism specifically. It reads:
_____________________________________________________________________________________
A common sense test: You’re dispatched to a house fire in a 2 story with a basement. Upon arrival, all 3 floors are well involved. After extinguishment, the neighbor across the street tells you he saw flashes on all 3 floors within seconds of each other. It turns out the owner has arson convictions on his record. You smell gasoline. Now, should you test the debris for accelerants? No matter what the owner and his friends tell you, wouldn’t you still test it? It’s a “NO-Brainer”…isn’t it?
NOW, HOW WOULD YOU INVESTIGATE?Look at the facts of the WTC, specifically Tower 7, collapses:1) Terrorists used explosives on WTC 1 in 1993.2) Over 118 first responders reported hearing explosions before all 3 collapses, many said it sounded like the “bang-bang-bang” you hear during a demolition.3) We have video, photographic and audio evidence of explosions after the impact and before collapse.4) Live news was reporting multiple explosions, and the possibility terrorists also planted explosives.5) Barry Jennings, the Emergency Coordinator for the NY Housing Authority reported explosions in Tower 7. He also reported being knocked down by explosions prior to the collapse of the tower.6) Molten steel AND concrete were found at Ground Zero “remember, hydrocarbon fires do not burn hot enough to melt steel or concrete.”N.F.P.A. 921- 19.2.4 Exotic Accelerants states that molten steel and concrete could indicate the use of exotic accelerants, specifically Thermite.7) WTC 7 was the first concrete and steel high rise to collapse during a fire that had not been struck by an aircraft. It was determined not to be significantly damaged by the falling debris, and diesel fuel tanks DID NOT contribute significantly to the fire (according to NIST final report 2008).
So, with all these indicators, would you test for exotic accelerants/explosive residue/Thermite? How could you confirm or rule out the possibility terrorists planted explosives in addition to the aircraft hits?
Why does N.I.S.T. REFUSE to this day to test for exotic accelerants in the most heinous crime in U.S. history? With the first high rise building collapses in history, why would N.I.S.T. NOT test for accelerants? Especially, with so many indicators, one in which we have lost so many lives, so many Brothers, so many Freedoms, and our Economy. I have not found a single fire investigator who can give a reason other than they didn’t want to find exotic accelerants or they were incompetent! Well, if it was incompetence, we can go back and still test. These scientists have tested…read their results!!If you can’t answer why, then please take the time to investigate. Browse our website, and please sign the petition. Our communities trust us. If we let them know this is not how professionals investigate, or how we treat our Brothers and Sisters who gave so much, they will listen. Also, please visit www.FealGoodFoundation.com and learn how to help our Brothers and Sisters in need.
Many of our Brothers and Sisters are sick and dying from their exposures at Ground Zero, our Country is crumbling. I am asking you to do something much more difficult than fighting a fire. I am asking you to be as professional as you would be on any emergency call. I am asking you to review the evidence surrounding 9-11. I am asking you to join us in demanding an investigation that follows National Standards, and passage of the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act to take care of the sick Ground Zero workers. I am asking you to stand with us to help SAVE OUR BROTHERS, SISTERS AND OUR COUNTRY!Respectfully,Erik Lawyererik@firefightersfor911truth.org
YOU CAN PRINT THIS AS A FLYER AND DELIVER TO FIREHOUSES Fire Station Letter
“EXOTIC ACCELERANTS”
This is directly from the 2001 Edition of the National Fire Protection Association NFPA 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations.
19.2.4 - “Exotic Accelerants. Mixtures of fuels and Class 3 or Class 4 oxidizers may produce an exceedingly hot fire and may be used to start or accelerate a fire. Thermite mixtures also produce exceedingly hot fires. Such accelerants generally leave residues that may be visually or chemically identifiable.
Exotic accelerants have been hypothesized as having been used to start or accelerate some rapidly growing fires and were referred to in these particular instances as high temperature accelerants (HTA). Indicators of exotic accelerants include an exceedingly rapid rate of fire growth, brilliant flares (particularly at the start of the fire), and melted steel or concrete. A study of 25 fires suspected of being associated with HTAs during the 1981-1991 period revealed that there was no conclusive scientific proof of the use of such HTA.
Notice how little volume of flame we have, yet a significant amount of molten material that appears to be metal pouring out of the building.
In any fire where the rate of fire growth is considered exceedingly rapid, other reasons for this should be considered in addition to the use of an accelerant, exotic or otherwise. These reasons include ventilation, fire suppression tactics, and the type and configuration of the fuels.”
NIST denies the existence of molten metal even though we have video and photographic evidence suggesting otherwise. We also have witness testimony from FDNY firemen themselves. Jet fuel and content fires do not produce the temperatures necessary to produce molten steel - that is why NIST has to deny the very presence of molten metal. This is not small stuff. This is a “smoking gun.” NFPA very clearly states melted steel or concrete is a sign of exotic accelerants. Therefore, the debris should have been thoroughly analyzed for exotic accelerants, specifically Thermite.
Now, remember, the investigation is just that…an investigation. We do not need overwhelming undisputable evidence to test for accelerants. It is very routine to test a house fire for accelerants. So, why at the first and only high rise building collapse sites due to fire, was this not done? How do we get safer buildings and solve crimes if we don’t test for the very things that could have led to the collapse?
This is not something to walk away from. We have to stand up together and demand a thorough investigation, following the National Standards, and justice.
Here is the video of NIST denying molten metal even though we have several FDNY members, very clearly stating the presence of molten metal.
Remember, you are the Jury…Who are you going to believe?
MOLTEN METAL AND CONCRETE
Remember 19.2.4 says molten steel or concrete - we have BOTH
Now, eventhough NIST refused to test the debris or dust for exotic accelerants, former BYU Professor Steven Jones and Jeffrey Farrer, a professor of nanochemistry at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, have analyzed several dust samples collected from the surrounding areas immediately following the collapse.
Click here to see their report which very clearly shows the presence of “exotic accelerants,” specifically “nano-thermite.”
Click here to read the Deseret News article reporting on their discovery.
High-order damage is the result of rapid rates of pressure rise.
“HIGH-ORDER DAMAGE”
NFPA 921
18.3.2 - “High-Order Damage. High-order damage is characterized by shattering of the structure, producing small, pulverized debris. Walls, roofs, and structural members are splintered or shattered, with the building completely demolished. Debris is thrown great distances, possibly hundreds of feet. High-order damage is the result of rapid rates of pressure rise.”
We see all signs of “high-order damage” in all three building collapses. There is no arguing this. And, it’s very clearly stated “high-order damage is the result of rapid rates of pressure rise.”
Now if we look at NFPA 921 14.3 “Preservation of the Fire Scene and Physical Evidence” we find the following “the cause of a fire or explosion is not known until near the end of the investigation. Therefore, the evidentiary or interpretative value of various pieces of physical evidence observed at the scene may not be known until, at, or near the end of the fire scene examination, or until the end of the complete investigation. As a result, the entire fire scene should be considered physical evidence and should be protected and preserved.”
It doesn’t get much clearer than this. This is Investigation-101! For, all those debunkers and detractors who say “it’s obvious” why the buildings came down, I beg to differ, and so does the NFPA -”the cause of a fire or explosion is not known until near the end of the investigation.” We are professionals, we are not supposed to jump to conclusions, and we are not supposed to let political and public factors determine what we do and don’t investigate. We definitely are not supposed to destroy the very evidence that will provide the answers. And, when every indicator in “the book” is screaming “high-order” explosive damage, we have a history of prior explosives use by terrorists in those exact buildings, we have over 100 first responders reporting hearing “secondary” explosions, the fact that evidence was destroyed and this wasn’t investigated thoroughly is nothing short of criminal! It’s time to get real loud about this. Our Brothers were murdered. My fellow firefighters, we can’t afford to brush this off to politics or ignore this anymore. Stand up with Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, demand answers, and justice.
“HIGH EXPLOSIVES”
NFPA 921 “18.12.2 High Exlosives…The effects produced by diffuse phase (i.e., fuel-air) explosions and solid explosives are very different. In a diffuse phase explosion (usually deflagration), structural damage will tend to be uniform and omnidirectional, and there will be relatively widespread evidence of burning, scorching, and blistering. In contrast, the rate of combustion of a solid explosive is extremely fast in comparison to the speed of sound. Therefore, pressure does not equalize through the explosion volume and extremely high pressures are generated near the explosion. At the location of the explosion, there should be evidence of crushing, splintering, and shattering effects produced by the higher pressures. Away from the source of the explosion, there is usually very little evidence of intense burning or scorching, except where hot shrapnel or firebrands have landed on combustible materials.”
18.12.2 is very clear. Fuel-air explosions (i.e.- JET FUEL) will be relatively widespread and there will be evidence of burning, scorching, and blistering. If the lobby truly “blew out” from the jet fuel explosion we would see extensive burning, scorching, and blistering. And, think about it, the elevator shafts do not stop in the lobby, they went below the lobby, so why did this apparent “fireball” pick the lobby to exit? Now, carefully look at this video, and you be the judge.
Do you see any signs of burning, scorching, or blistering? On your size-up pay close attention to the plants and the ceiling…do you see ANY soot? is this what you would expect to see after a “jet-fueled fireball” blew out the lobby?
Does this match the damage we would expect to see with solid explosives? (i.e. crushing, splintering, and shattering effects produced by higher pressures).
Click here to see the summary of evidence that proves conclusively that 3 World Trade Center buildings should have been tested for “exotic accelerants.” It also establishes the most probable cause of collapse on 9/11/2001 to be the result of controlled demolitions. It makes no attempt to determine why, or to imply by whom.
Have you ever asked yourself, what evidence does the government have that proves those specific terrorists were behind it? Well, here it is….click on the link below and it will take you to the evidence they have accumulated. Their strongest evidence is shown below.
GOVERNMENT EVIDENCE
The following photographs are from trial exhibits from United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui Criminal No. 01-455-A
Saudi arabian passport in the name of satam suqami found at the World Trade Center after the collapse of the buildings
Here is the CNN article about the discovery.
Now, remember when the planes flew into the Towers there was a massive fireball that has been officially stated to be the cause of the eventual collapse of the building. So, this passport had to survive the initial fireball without a singe, fly out of the building, and remain in a safe place because it was found after the debris from the buildings blanketed the area.
Backside of Satam Passport recovered on the street after the collapse of the buildings.
Partial ID card reading ALHAZMI from the Pentagon crash site
Flight 93 crash site crater
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia passport for Saeed A A A Al Ghamdi recovered from the United Airlines Flight 93 crash site.
Assem-Jarrah business card recovered from flight 93 crash site
Terrorists were reported to be wearing red bandanas. This bandana was recovered from the Flight 93 crash site.
Terrorist photo from Flight 93 Crash Site
Recovered from Flight 93 Crash Site
Terrorist's driver license recovered from Flight 93 crash site
Example of titanium and steel engines that were not identifiable at crash site.
After looking at the evidence you should come to your own conclusions. And, if you think this doesn’t add up, please read more, sign our petition, and get involved.
We are not implying the improbable is impossible. As professional firefighters, we have seen many things from fire, accident and crime scenes that don’t “make sense”. What we are suggesting is that there is more than sufficient evidence to doubt the “official” government story. There was no reason to destroy the very steel from all three towers that would have aided in the investigation. There is no reason to withold vast amounts of evidence that would very clearly support or disprove their version (ie: hard evidence proving the make/model/specific registration numbers from the aircraft, or the complete collection of the Pentagon vidoes, specifically any images of a commercial jet flying into the Pentagon). There is a large body of physical, photographic, audio, witness testimony and video evidence that directly contradicts the “official” story. We challenge you to really look at what the goverment has presented versus what many independent researchers have produced.
Colonel Nelson says it very well.
Col. George Nelson, MBA, U.S. Air Force (ret) “ Former U.S. Air Force aircraft accident investigator and airplane parts authority. Graduate, U.S. Air Force War College. 34-year Air Force career.
Licensed commercial pilot. Licensed airframe and powerplant mechanic.
Essay:“In all my years of direct and indirect participation, I never witnessed nor even heard of an aircraft loss, where the wreckage was accessible, that prevented investigators from finding enough hard evidence to positively identify the make, model, and specific registration number of the aircraft — and in most cases the precise cause of the accident. …
The government alleges that four wide-body airliners crashed on the morning of September 11 2001, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 human beings, yet not one piece of hard aircraft evidence has been produced in an attempt to positively identify any of the four aircraft. On the contrary, it seems only that all potential evidence was deliberately kept hidden from public view.
http://www.physics911.net/georgenelson
COURAGE
On September 11, 2001 hundreds of our Brothers had the courage to stand up to the actions of Terrorists, and enter those towers to help rescue people and extinguish fires. 343 firefighters and 60 police officers gave their lives standing up for what they believed in… helping others in their time of need. Well, my Brothers and Sisters, it is our turn to show some courage. We must have the courage to confront the horrors of that day, the humility to consider we don’t know the whole story, the willingness to educate ourselves, and the responsibility to inform others. We must have the courage to stand up to those who are stopping a true investigation into who murdered more than 3,000 innocent civilians and over 400 of our Brothers.
We must demand answers and accountability for why hundreds of New York Firemen didn’t hear evacuation orders, how 3 towers collapsed so quickly and so explosively, and why thousands of rescue workers and civilians alike were not warned of the extremely dangerous atmosphere that was known to exist.
If you think the media or our government has given us the answers, think again. If you think this can’t happen again, think again. Seven years later most Americans haven’t even heard of Tower 7. Seven years later, most Americans don’t know thousands more of those rescue workers are sick, and many are dying from their exposures at Ground Zero. Seven years later, the FBI still hasn’t listed Osama Bin Laden as “wanted” for the 9/11 attacks. This is incredible–they are the lead investigators, and they don’t have enough evidence to put him on the “most wanted” list for those attacks? So, why do so many Americans believe he was behind it? Why are we at war over it? Do you know what evidence there is? The destruction of evidence, obstruction of justice, incomplete answers, and abysmal accountability is disgusting and unacceptable.
We must all look at the evidence with an open mind and make rational unbiased judgments. Remember, you don’t have to be an expert to sit on a jury, and you have the right to be critical of, and demand answers from the “experts”. Take the time to gather facts, and have the courage to ask for more. If you come to the same conclusion as the FBI, and don’t place him on your “most wanted” list, then have the courage to help find those responsible for the deaths of so many of our Brothers and Sisters. We all need to show some courage by demanding answers and justice!!
ONE LIEUTENANT’S PERSPECTIVE
Earl Emerson30 year veteran Seattle Fire DepartmentAuthor of Vertical Burn, Into the Inferno, Pyro, Firetrap, and numerous other fire novels.
….If you’re a firefighter you knew the government was lying that first week when the EPA administrator, Christine Whitman, told the public the air in lower Manhattan was safe to breathe. Any firefighter who’d been on the job more than two weeks knew that was a crock. Now, up to seventy percent of the people working on the site and living in the area have lung disease. There were other, more crucial lies. Cruise this site. Open your mind. For any firefighter, this is the most important website you will visit this year or any other year.
Read full article
MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
Erik LawyerFounding MemberAugust 23, 2008
As Firefighters we immediately respond to, and risk everything for a “Mayday” call. Most Firefighters go an entire career without calling a “Mayday”. We know our Brothers only call one if someone is in serious peril and they can’t handle it themselves. By the Grace of God, I have never had to call a “Mayday” on the fireground or in the air. But, I am calling one now on our soil. “MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY!!!” Our Country, Our sick Brothers and Sisters desperately need your HELP.
Read the full articleWant to learn more? Be sure to open all the hyperlinks in the article for the “Big Picture”
Notice: Not all firefighters agree with our position, nor is this website endorsed by any City or Agency employing the firefighters who have signed our petition. These are our individual beliefs.
----- An Obituary printed in the London Times........
"Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; life isn't always fair; and maybe it was my fault. Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when political correctness became the "in thing" and the well-intentioned but overbearing "Human Rights laws" were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate, teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch, and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition. Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Aspirin to a student but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault. Common Sense finally gave up the will to live after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust, his wife, Discretion, his daughter, Responsibility his son, Reason.
He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers: I know my rights, I want it now, someone else is to blame, and I'm a victim
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing."
And, I'm not even a Republican!
Date: Saturday, March 14, 2009, 10:31 AM
Here's the opinion piece from Margaret Bengs I referred to at our last meeting, I hope you enjoy it. Could we discuss including this piece somehow in an upcoming newsletter, on the website or even in the weekly newsletter to school parents? See you on the 31st!
Catholic schools swamped by secular tide
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By Margaret A. Bengs Special to The Bee
Published: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 - 12:00 am Page 19A Last Modified: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 - 7:49 am
The announcement that Loretto High School, the Catholic school that has educated Sacramento girls since 1955, will close in June – unless a newly launched effort by parents and the Diocese of Sacramento to save it succeeds – is a microcosm of the steady crumbling of our religious institutions under the weight of rampant secularism and economic strains.
Catholic school enrollment in the Diocese of Sacramento has now dropped eight years in a row and has been dropping nationally for decades.
We can no longer operate under the modern delusion that the weakening of our faith-based institutions will have no consequence on our public life. In fact, these institutions provide the guideposts that help us advance the common good and halt dysfunctions in the social order.
Catholic schools are islands of refuge in a sea of secularism that are helping us preserve our spiritual and moral heritage. The loss of such a school is the loss of a small community, but one that shapes the minds and hearts of its students in ways that will last a lifetime.
As a graduate of San Luis Rey Academy, a Catholic girl’s high school adjacent to Mission San Luis Rey, also now sadly closed, the images of innocence and respect for scholarship forever etched in my mind are so different from what many children in public school see today.
Instead of the below-knee, checkered blue and brown pleated skirts with crisp white blouses that we wore, in today's public schools, we see hip-hugging pants and purple hair.
Instead of nuns clothed in long black habits modeling service and selflessness, a local teacher is accused of sending lewd text messages with sexual photos to two students.
Public school students used to be exposed to themes of virtue and character. McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader, for example, taught in public schools a century ago, while not endorsing a particular religion, acknowledged, as did our nation's founders, the importance of religion to a civilized society. "Religion is a social concern," it stated, "not merely a private affair," for it is "the best support of the virtues and principles, on which the social order rests." Erase all thought of a supreme being from a community, it predicted, "and selfishness would absorb the whole man. Appetite, knowing no restraint, would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws." Since then, these lessons have been swept away with the modern judiciary-endorsed sterilization of public schools from teaching moral values.
Replacing faith-based solutions to community problems is now most often a government remedy. Yet, while government welfare and other social programs can offer material help, they cannot answer the deeper human needs. And their burdensome costs often deplete families of resources they would have had to meet the challenges themselves.
To those who believe we can divorce spiritual influences from the public square without consequence, let us ask: Are we better off today than we were in the 1950s, when Loretto was established, and when religious education and vocations were a stronger and more vibrant part of our community? When Hollywood portrayed the importance of religion to community life, and when a weekly program by Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen actually aired on mainstream media? One look at today's crime, family breakdown, child abuse, gangs, teen pregnancies, addiction and other symptoms of moral disorders reveals the answer.
No, life in my high school was not wholly idyllic. Contemporary cultural influences had begun to overpower the spiritual. Nuns eventually discarded their habits. Hardcover missiles were tossed in favor of paper ones with new translations, elevating the contemporary over the permanent.
But unlike today, we didn't use the excuse of human error to knock down a religion or a group of people. We were taught that every day, humans must struggle with our darker side and that character was developed by making the right – and usually more difficult – choice.
The question is, will we let the hardening and secularization of our culture sweeps us out on its tide, or will we do our part to strengthen the tide of good pulling us back toward the sun? For real solutions to our social problems, we need more than economic recovery. We need moral recovery.
What better place to begin than to restore our spiritual heritage one school at a time, so that we will pass on to our children the beauty and innocence of a world based on the whole truth of the human being.
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SPREADING DEMOCRACY
3-17-2009
Taking instructions from the drums of war by Shakespeare and the confessions of Goering during the Nuremburg trials then adding the Bush doctrine on the pretext of spreading democracy you have a world in chaos and in recession heading for a depression.
It is easy to do all we need is someone to invent a disaster, implement the disaster, then go after some country that would be easy to destroy and claim they were the cause of the disaster and invade and demand they vote for a democracy. The dissidents are killed off, the ones that oppose the election and the majority that is left especially the ones that see the writing on the wall and don’t want to be killed and find it easier to vote with the majority and vote for democracy. Knowing that the invading military will finally go home after they have had their fun of killing off the opposition and they can then resume life before the disaster.
Yes we lose many more than was killed in the disaster but that is the price of spreading democracy. Also the USA does not benefit one bit so it is easy to say we did not do the invasion for our own benefit and as a result we spent billions and many lives and received nothing for the effort . The military did a good job but that is their business and in order to elevate their position in the government and keep funding at the highest level it is important for them to put forth their best effort. Whether they win or lose which is often the case they will continue the crusade to fight the perpetual wars.
By inventing a disaster it is best done with suicidal people that as a result of their religion they think they will go to heaven a non-existence place and use them for the invention. The people that arranged the invention will take the methods to their grave. Dead men tell no tales. The Taliban or Al QaIda is not the kind of terrorist group to fly aircraft into buildings, just not characteristic of that group, they normally use IED’s (improvised explosive devices) that are easy to get and use, and even if Ben Laden admits to the venture it is only because he benefits from the propaganda and he never had anything to do with the 9/11 attack. Ben Laden did not take credit for the attack! That attack needed an accomplish like the CIA and a person within the government to give the order, then finding suicidal persons was easy in Saudi Arabia and the money to implement the attack. Steel buildings do not collapse due to fires and the third building was not hit by an aircraft, melted steel was found in the aftermath that was caused by thermite. The hole in the pentagon was not due to a commercial airline, more like a missile.
The results of the attack was enough to propel the military to invade an innocent country, killing thousands, maiming thousands, spending billions of borrowed money, looking for one small group and the leader Bin Laden and they are still looking but the complexion has changed because they cannot find the so called perpetrator, so change the subject and purse a new goal in order to keep the conflict going.
PLEDGE TO THE FLAG AND THE REPUBLIC
9-19-2005
A pledge of allegiance to the flag and country is an ok thing to do but why do kids need to do it every day. Once in a lifetime should be enough unless you renounce the allegiance then you may need to do it again if you choose. Kids that are young enough to make the pledge are probably not old enough to know what it really means. After they are old enough to know what they are pledging they will also find out that equal justice and liberty for all could be a goal but it doesn’t exist in this country or probably any country. God certainly does not have anything to do with a pledge to the flag and the republic. You don’t get baptized every day, but the Catholics go thru the same ritual every day, why not just do it once per lifetime. But if you want to do all those things then set aside a day and say all those things, the pledge, the baptism, the Mass, etc. and then get on with your life and do some good in the world and quit wasting time and money on things that don’t matter to anyone.
A JEWISH PERSPECTIVE ABOUT THEIR RELIGION
BY AL SAPOWITH
rod,Good seeing you. We should do more. Here’s my paper.Al THE SH’MAIt seems logical to me that the concept of God came from the imagination of man. Seeing the wonders of nature that he could not explain, hence feared, man invented gods that controlled these wonders and protected him from them. This, I believe, was the basis for the sun gods, moon gods, harvest gods, fertility gods, and the like, Polytheism at it’s best. In Barbara Tuchman’s words “In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind, they are the creatures of man, not vice versa.” It is incredible, that well before any of nature’s deified phenomena of the polytheistic world was understood, well before the term science had any meaning in the modern day sense, that anyone had the insight and vision to realize that if there was any god at all, there could only be one God. One has to marvel at the audacity of those who went against all authority, beliefs, practices, and teachings and rejected the plethora of gods being worshipped by their neighbors. This was the start of monotheism. The one God concept is attributed to Abraham. It’s not clear that there was an Abraham. It could be a name chosen by an ancient seer for the first letter of the alphabet. It’s not clear that Abraham was the only person with this concept. There was at least one monotheistic Egyptian Pharaoh. Some historians question whether Moses was one of those monotheistic Egyptians. It is not known just how long this one God concept was around before the Hebrews accepted it and made it the cornerstone of their religion. But, the fact is that some 4000 years ago ancient peoples, later called Jews, did form and embrace the concept of one God, an invisible God that could not be portrayed. These peoples encompassed their concept of God, their theology, within a single sentence, the “Sh’ma”; Hebrew Here Hear oh Israel the Lord our God the Lord is One I’m proud to be of these peoples.A MEANING FOR THE SH’MAThere are many facets of Judaism. This paper addresses one, Jewish theology, our thoughts about God, a meaning for the Sh’ma. It is unemotionally philosophical in nature. The "felt", "heart", "mystical" aspects of Judaism are outside its purview. Nevertheless, though not discussed, it is hoped that the understanding of the Sh’ma with its philosophical base, presented herein, can support other Jewish facets. While the Sh’ma is the one common thread throughout Judaism, Jews hardly ever talk about the meaning of the Sh’ma. We have sermons about morality, our quest for tikom olim, but essentially no sermons about Jewish theology. Jewish religious feeling, from its very beginnings, was based not on theoretical reasoning about God and theological matters but on a system of life as regulated by the Torah. The practical character of the Jewish religion, which stresses action not contemplation, has not been favorable to the development of a formulated philosophy of life or dogma. Moses Maimonides’ thirteen articles of faith constitute the best known attempt to formulate concise dogmatic formulas. Believing knowledge of truth can be derived from reason for the true philosopher (the ‘adult’), but requires revelation for the masses who do not know philosophy (the ‘child’), he assembled the 113 rules of the Halakah. Following these rules one would not stray from Judaism.To many, this was the last significant advance in Jewish philosophy or theology. Those who hold this view assume that knowing the Jewish intellectual classics of the Middle Ages or the Talmud equips one to fashion a philosophy of Judaism that will speak to all situations. They do not appreciate or recognize the unique difficulties which modern science and culture raise for Judaism, for all religions for that matter, with Judaism facing the additional challenge of emancipation. When we were confined to the ghettos of Europe we were separated from the rest of society. In each land we constituted a country within a country, with little interference from the outside world. We had our own way of life, our own laws. Being freed brought forth the questions, how can one join the rest of society (which was Christian) and be modern (compatible with science), and still be Jewish. Here’s a brief review of some Jewish philosophers who wrestled with these problems and their thoughts about God. Moses Mendelssohn (1700’s) was the first in the modern era to question the old ways. While he believed the existence and providence of God to be self-evident and that Judaism was divinely inspired when God gave the Israelites the laws at Sinai, he attempted to present Judaism as a religion of reason, free from dogmatic faith and creedal fetters. Judaism appeared to him not as a revealed religion but as a revealed legislation, interpreting revelation as a form of reason. The Torah, he maintained, commands not belief but deeds. He tried to substitute a religion of reason, thus radically denying the dogmatic character of Judaism. A century later Hermann Cohen, the foremost Kantian scholar of his time, developed his ideas on Judaism. To a great extent Cohen’s view of religion grew out of his passionate concern with ethics. Every ethical act ultimately aims at the moral interrelationship of all people. As is the case with scientific knowledge, our efforts to realize the good never accomplish the ideal, which, with each achievement, still seems to be as far away. The ethical task will be accomplished only in that ideal time religion has called the coming of the Messiah (Cohen considers the Messiah a mythological person). He sees humankind gradually extending the range and depth of moral relationships through its own natural efforts, achieving a messianic age at the end of time. Cohen’s affirmation of God may be traced by way of the infinite time required for the ethical task. If the ethical task is to continue to its ideal completion, there must be some guarantee that nature and humankind continue without an end. But, not only was nature believed to be ruled by laws that are indifferent to ethics, the scientific view of his day suggested that the world was running down to randomness which would limit time. If people believed morality could never reach its goal, that belief might generate despair and abandonment of ethical striving. This contradiction between the natural and ethical realms was philosophically intolerable. In order to maintain its rationality, Cohen’s system required an idea that would allow science and ethics their distinctiveness yet bring them into relation with one another, one that would permit ethics to be lived out in the realm of nature. This integrating idea was “God” on a plane separate and above both ethics and science. He defined this system, for Judaism, as ethical monotheism (a religion of reason).This reasoning followed Kant’s way of thinking about religion, namely, starting from human experience and then seeking to establish God’s reality. This is the liberal approach to religion as against the traditional approach that is based on the idea of God giving people knowledge or revelation. As the twentieth century moved on, Jewish thinkers were increasingly troubled by the liberalism derived from Hermann Cohen’s ethical monotheism. It led to the easy inference that everything in Judaism other than ethics - (belief in God, devotion to the Jewish people, the rich way of life mandated by the Torah) - might almost be eliminated, or, at least, considered secondary. The issue was not so much the primacy of ethics but their sufficiency. The premise may be put positively: an authentic Jewish existence is more than ethical though ethics are central to it. But what constitutes the more-than-ethical aspects of being a Jew? Leo Baeck tried to answer this question by trying to modify rather than break with the Cohen’s rationalist interpretation of Judaism.As a religious liberal Baeck believed in religious change. He therefore had the responsibility of clarifying what remained true in Judaism today as in the past, despite all the apparent reforms of ideas and practice. He was free not only of a philosophical system as he approached the texts, but also of the traditional theologian’s insistence that they were God’s revelation. For Baeck the validity of Judaism did not rest on a unique event at Sinai, but rather on the truth of the central ideas that the Jewish people had maintained over the ages.In terms of result there is not much to separate the rabbi-historian Leo Baeck from the philosopher of Judaism, Hermann Cohen, because Baeck, found ethical monotheism to be the essence of Judaism: “from the very beginning of the real, the prophetic religion of Israel, its cardinal factor was the moral law. Judaism is not merely ethical, but ethics constitute its principle”. But, Baeck felt that Cohen’s Neo-Kantian exposition establishing the centrality of God in human existence in terms of God as an idea or a concept was too abstract to elicit piety and hardly provided a reason for expanding ethics into a broader pattern of religious observance. To the devout, there remains an unbearable distance between what philosophy says God is and what the religious life discloses. To bridge this gap Baeck utilized the notion of religious consciousness, introducing the felt, subjective aspect of religion into his explanation of Judaism. This results in two motifs for the essence of Judaism, human ethics and religious consciousness. In Baeck’s non-philosophic approach he uses religious consciousness to reclaim aspects of traditional Jewish piety that were inaccessible to the Neo-Kantians. Religious conscienceless senses the mystery behind the creation which fosters a religious certainty that is incalculably richer than the rational assertions of philosophy. This religious certainty, or experience, testifies to what lies beyond the ethical, to the God who is more than the idea implied by ethics but is the One who has the right to issue imperatives and make them categorical. Reason cannot reach such a God. For Baeck, ethics without this mysterious grounding in God is mere moralism. For Judaism, there can be no ethics that does not stem from a living God who establishes relationships with humankind.There is the concern that intimate talk about God engenders an anthropomorphism that believers can take seriously. This destroys God’s transcendence, thereby vitiating the authority by which the ethical comes to us as a categorical demand. Medieval philosophers waged a protracted battle against this misunderstanding. They succeeded but only by turning God into an abstraction that denied the innermost reality of religious experience. Judaism overcame that danger by asserting a fundamental paradox about God: the exalted, transcendent God is nonetheless the present, personal God. Nothing stands between each individual and God - God is that close - but the very same God remains the God of the infinite heights and depths of creation. The ethical and the devotional are simultaneously affirmed in Judaism. Does this mean that Judaism affirms a personal God? Of that, Baeck insists, nothing can be said today and nothing was said in classic Judaism. In the 1930’s, when America was in the depths of the depression, anti-Semitism was rampant and Jewish life was in crisis, the first major American philosophy of Judaism appeared with the publication of “Judaism as a Civilization” by Mordecai Kaplan. As a rationalist, Kaplan differed from the German rationalists by focusing not on the autonomous, thinking individual but on the Jewish people. Kaplan believed that one cannot usefully speak of individual Jewish identity without talking about the corporate nature of the Jews. In Kaplan's eyes, contemporary Judaism's difficulties arose from the upheaval that affected all Western peoples and religions in modern times. He defined the sources of these difficulties as "Nationalism" and "Naturalism”. "Nationalism" includes the concept of a changing society from monarchal, one that is divinely ordered, hence unchangeable, to that of a secular state founded on a social contract. These changes brought the Jews emancipation, the end of ghetto existence both physically and spiritually. After centuries of segregation, full participation in the life of their country entailed a radical change in their accustomed way of life and their manner of thinking about it."Naturalism" identifies the way people in secular states think about the world. At the simplest, naturalism is the rejection of supernaturalism. Moderns limit their thought to this world and structure it in terms of the natural order. They consider the scientific approach to reality, including human beings and society, the most reliable method of ascertaining truth. As a consequence, naturalistic religious thinking focuses on people and their welfare rather than on God and God's purposes. Modernity involves a radical shift from theocentrism to anthropocentrism and Kaplan often employs the term "humanism" in this people-focused but not God-denying sense.Theological humanism revolutionizes the classic religious emphases on supernatural revelation, miracles, and otherworldly salvation. Not just God's word, but God too, must now be found in, not above, the natural order; miracles are dismissed as unscientific, and this world, the only one human beings can know, must be the place in which they seek salvation. Most moderns live by these views, though some are unconscious of that fact. Kaplan therefore has no patience with religious leaders who timidly still use the old religious terms. A truly contemporary understanding of Judaism must be naturalistic so as to be coherent with our modern worldview.In what sense does Kaplan use the word "God"? He rejects any description of God as personal, for to him a personal Divinity is an anthropomorphic one. No naturalistic thinker could accept such a God. Kaplan also rejected reference to God in anthropopsychic terms with phrases ascribing to God human qualities such as: He loved, He punished, He rewarded. Some philosophers have identified God with strictly impersonal scientific concepts such as force or energy. Kaplan rejects this view on two grounds: first, as an unwarranted metaphysical assertion, albeit a naturalistic one; and second, because it renders God morally neutral. Kaplan's God must be related to human self-realization and that, inevitably has an ethical component. Not a wish or an illusion, God refers to those real processes in nature that support our efforts to live abundantly. Our faith is subjective in being based on our hope that we might fulfill ourselves. It is objective because by God we mean those forces in nature that make it possible for us to achieve our ideals. For Kaplan "God is the Power that makes for salvation”.Can these ideas be summarized? I will try. By applying reason and discarding beliefs in miracles, all found Judaism to be a religion of reason compatible with science. All agree that God should not be considered in anthropomorphic terms or, while discussed only by Kaplan, even anthropopsychic terms. Starting with Cohen all identified Judaism with ethical monotheism and all rejected the concept of a personal God. Some thoughts. In their goal of squaring Judaism with modernity it seems that the God concepts developed by these theologians are quite complex. Perhaps this was in response to the pressure and pace of science and modern thought. In contrast, there was no complexity when the original God concepts were formed. Life was simple then. When the ancient shepherds gazed up at the night sky they were awed by the splendor of the universe. They felt that some Force or God created it all. Can there be such a clear and simple God concept today? Does such a concept have to vie with science, or can it spring from science? With all that science has brought to us there is one consistent message: the more we discover, the more we find we don’t know. When cosmologists look into the sky they divine all manner of phenomena. But, what happens when they get to the end of space, what’s just beyond (infinity of the very large)? Atomic physicists are constantly seeking the smallest particles to identify the building blocks of matter. But, when they find the smallest particle, why can’t it be split (infinity of the very small)? When did time start and what happened just before? Or when will time end and what happens just after? Perhaps there is an infinity of dimensions too, string theory uses ten. There are those who may scoff at these questions, but I doubt that they will ever be amenable to solution by man. Not only is the universe stranger than we know, it is stranger than we can know. Yet, we are surrounded by a universe of infinities which are all beyond my ken. So, like the shepherds of old, in my ignorance, my wonder, my desire to form a whole picture, and perhaps my fear, I choose to place my concept of God at infinity. We are here. Some force started it all. This SINGLE Force, Being, Omnipotence is my God. No concept of God can be proven, all are and must be conjecture. This concept is derived philosophically from the fundamental limits of science. It is as basic as man’s earliest instincts for survival. It is devoid of revelation or miracles. It does not invoke ‘self evidence’ of the existence of God. Calling forth no human attributes, it is devoid of anthropomorphism and anthropopsychism. And, I believe, is compatible with the development of the God idea in Judaism. The Sh’ma encompasses such a concept.TYING A NON PERSONAL GOD TO ETHICSLike the philosophers who did not espouse a personal God, this abstract God of the cosmos, for want of a better name, is so distant it does not engender belief in a personal God. Because humanly, a religion centered on an impersonal God seems a contradiction in terms, the philosophers perceived a need for the laity (the ‘child) to feel a closeness to God. How does one involve oneself personally with a God who takes no personal interest in you? How does one pray to a non personal God? Judaism’s answer has been by asserting the fundamental paradox: nothing stands between each individual and God, God is that close, but the very same God remains the God of the infinite heights and depths of creation. I have trouble with this dual mode or two essences of God. How different is this thinking than Christianity’s Trinity?One could argue philosophically that, in projecting an omnipotent Being that started it all, omnipotence is accompanied by omnipresence. Thus, an omnipresent cosmic God could be all around us, hence close – justifying the paradox. Spinoza saw such a God in all of nature. But, this is pantheism, and with pantheism as with polytheism God can be identified with all aspects of nature. However, that very identification destroys God's transcendence.Given that we relinquish belief in a personal God, when God is declared to be impersonal, what happens to our standards of human development? When God no longer serves as a model for people to emulate, how are ethics to be formulated and maintained? Judaism is grounded in ethics, it is an essence of Judaism, ethical monotheism is an apt description. But, does that description apply to a God of the cosmos? Since this concept does not support the notion of a personal God and does not attribute any qualities to God, is such a God morally neutral? Is there a way to tie ethics to an impersonal God of the cosmos? I was faced with these questions when my wife asked, "if there is no personal God how can there be ethics? Why would anyone choose to do good instead of evil. What generates ethics if there is no fear of a judgmental and wrathful God?” After some deliberation, I decided that the operative word was accommodation. As man grew from a single hunter, to a family, to a tribe, to a complex society he found that his best survival mode was within a group. As such he had to accommodate the needs and wishes of others - to get along, one had to go along. As societies grew more complex laws were developed to set norms for man's relation to his fellow man and to his interplay within society. These included the Noatic laws, the laws of Hamarabi, the Ten Commandments. These laws along with religious tenets helped in the growth of ethical thought and behavior. No law, certainly not its application, is perfect. Man's obedience has from time to time been abysmal. But, one can discern a gradual improvement in society's behavior over the 20,000 years of historical development. This improvement, albeit glacial, is fraught with noise (in the engineering sense), the holocaust being a prime example. Nevertheless, it is clear to me that ethical conduct has slowly made meaningful strides. Some examples. A simple comparison of the mores of the most primitive isolated tribes that still exist with our modern societies can demonstrate this point. Human and animal sacrifice are no longer practiced. Slavery, which was once part of the warp and woof of life, with the Torah promulgating rules pertaining to it, is universally against the law and has almost disappeared. There's a lot more compassion and help for the downtrodden practiced by the societies of today. A recent headline, based on a U.N. report on the status of infant mortality, education, freedom, and poverty proclaims “World becoming a better place”. In response to the shock of the holocaust, Western powers are now advancing the cause of humanitarian intervention. And, while probably premature and rife with politics, the concept and framework of Universal (supra national) Jurisdiction for the world has recently been proposed to enforce this humanitarianism. Since I developed these thoughts I found that there are extensive studies of mankind's "accommodation" under various labels of "altruism", "give and take", "group cooperation", "symbiotic relationships". As they are much more erudite than my explanation and it is a vital issue, it is worthwhile to summarize them, copying and rearranging their writings for clarity. I have found them exciting not only in a scientific sense but also in a theological sense. Mayr pointed out that Darwin's theory of evolution provided a scientific foundation for ethics. This is contrary to the widespread thesis of social Darwinism, promoted at the end of the 19th century by Spencer which posited if natural selection rewards the individual only for behavior that enhances his own survival and reproductive success, how can such pure selfishness lead to any sound ethics? Are not evolutionary explanations at odds with the development of ethics? This old thesis of social Darwinism - strict selfishness - was based on an incomplete understanding of animals, particularly social species. We now know that in a social species not only the individual must be considered, an entire social group can be the target of selection. Darwin applied this reasoning to the human species in 1871 in “The Descent of Man”. The survival and prosperity of a social group depends to a large extent on the harmonious cooperation of the members of the group, and this behavior must be based on altruism. Kin selection and reciprocal helpfulness in particular will be greatly favored. Such altruism, by furthering the survival and prosperity of the group, also indirectly benefits the fitness of the group's individuals. The result amounts to selection favoring altruistic behavior. These observations are not limited to man. Selection for altruism has been demonstrated in recent years to be widespread among many other social animals. There have been a number of computer studies simulating the forces of natural selection. While perhaps tedious, presentation in some detail of their results is in order. In 1950, a game theory known as the Prisoner's Dilemma was conceived. In a simple mode each of two prisoners is asked whether the other committed a crime. Their level of punishment depends on whether one, both, or neither indicates the other's guilt. The two players engaged in this game have only to decide whether they wish to cooperate with each other or not with the following rules for a single encounter: if both choose to cooperate, they each get a reward of three points; if both defect (by not cooperating), they each get only one point. But if one player defects and the other cooperates, the defector gets five points, whereas the player who chooses to cooperate receives nothing. If the first player defects, the second who cooperates will end up with nothing. Clearly, the second player ought to have defected. In fact, even if the first player cooperates, the second should defect, because this combination earns five points instead of three. No matter what the first player does, the second's best option is to defect. But the first player is in exactly the same position. Hence, both players will choose to defect and receive only one point each. Note, by both defecting the group gets 2 points, by both cooperating the group gets 6 points. For a single encounter this game highlights the difference between what is best from an individual's point of view and what is best from a collective view. More realistically, individuals interact frequently rather than just once, so that each participant has to think twice about defecting as this could make the other player defect on the next occasion. So the strategy for the repeated game can change in response to what happened in previous rounds. Extending these experiments to an entire population of programmed players, where each player is wedded to a given strategy (cooperative or selfish) and the payoff, instead of points, is in offspring who have the characteristics of the parent, successive tournaments (generations) are conducted to see which 'personality' will be successful. These computer studies have grown increasingly complex involving sophisticated models and countless strategies. The results show that as the encounters and generations increase, conditions that more closely simulate evolution, the exploiters depleted their own resources while the population of the cooperators increased. Altruism pays off. These results may seem familiar from daily life in the home or office, and may be reasonable for many of the activities humans and other social animals conduct, but for simpler organisms delayed payoffs in the form of future reproductive success should count for little. If life is short and unpredictable, there is scant evolutionary pressure to make long-term investments. And yet biologists observe cooperation even among simple organisms that do not possess such abilities. Creatures, such as many invertebrates, seem to exhibit forms of reciprocal cooperation, even though they often cannot recognize individual players or remember their actions. How can altruistic arrangements be established and maintained in these circumstances? One possible solution is that these players find a fixed set of fellow contestants and make sure the game is played largely with them. In general, this selectivity will be hard to attain. But there is one circumstance in which it is not only easy, it is automatic. If the players occupy fixed sites, and if they interact only with close neighbors, there will be no need to recognize and remember, because the other players are fixed by the geometry. Whereas in many of our simulations players always encounter a representative sample of the population, we have also looked specifically at scenarios in which every player interacts only with a few neighbors on a two-dimensional grid. Such "spatial games" are very recent. They give an altogether new twist to the Prisoner's Dilemma. Consider a spatially constrained version of the tournament, with each member of the population sitting on a square of an extended chessboard. Each player is either a pure cooperator or a pure defector and interacts only with its eight immediate neighbors, playing one round of the Prisoner's Dilemma with each. In the next generation the square is inherited by whoever totaled the most points. A lone cooperator will be exploited by the surrounding defectors and succumb. But four cooperators in a block can conceivably hold their own, because each interacts with three cooperators; a defector, as an outsider, can reach and exploit at most two. If the bonus for cheating is not too large, clusters of cooperators will grow. Conversely, lone defectors will always do well, because they will be surrounded by exploitable cooperators. But by spreading, defectors surround themselves with their like and then diminish their own returns. The actual evolution of such spatial systems depends on the payoff values. It is certainly possible that cooperators are wiped off the board. But we frequently find variously shifting mosaics, with both strategies being maintained. Mixtures of pure cooperators and pure defectors can coexist indefinitely, in fluctuating proportions. In a different but related context, similar spatial patterns allow populations of hosts and parasites, or prey and predators, to survive together, despite the inherent instability of their interactions. (This, to a large extent, simulates the animal kingdom. But, for society, the growth of ethical laws and practices create a bias for the eventual success of the cooperators.) Other choices of grid patterns, including irregular or random arrays, yield similar results. The important requirement is that each player should not interact with too many neighbors. Such cooperative strategies may have been crucial for pre biotic evolution, which many researchers believe may have taken place on surfaces (which spatial structures simulate) rather than in well-stirred solutions. These studies illustrate how cooperation might arise and be maintained in real biological systems. Sophisticated creatures may be drawn to follow strategies that encourage cooperation because of repeated interactions among individuals who can recognize and remember one another. But in simpler organisms, cooperation persists, perhaps by virtue of self-organized spatial structures generated by interactions with immediate neighbors in some fixed spatial array. Catalyzing the replication of a molecule constitutes a form of mutual help. Hence, a chain of catalysts, with each link feeding back on itself, would be the earliest instance of mutual aid. In a sense, cooperation could be older than life. Tying cooperative behavior with the formation of life, as indicated in the above studies of fixed spatial arrays, links ethics to the initiation of life. What could be more scientifically powerful, conceptually sophisticated, or theologically exciting. If God can be tied to ethics through nature then nature is not morally neutral, and an impersonal God, such as a God of the cosmos that created nature is not morally neutral. Doesn’t this concept comply with Baeck’s need for the ‘mysterious grounding of ethics’ without resorting to a personal closeness to God? Doesn’t it also satisfy Kaplan’s complaint about the moral neutrality of an impersonal God? And, isn’t fear of a judgmental and wrathful God no longer required to generate ethical conduct?” RELINQUISHING BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD AND MIRACLES Any form of a personal God suggests a link between the finite and the infinite, an attempt to bound the unboundable, a contradiction of terms. It says that man, one of millions of creatures on earth, a small planet orbiting an insignificant star, in one of the countless galaxies in the universe, holds God’s personal attention - what hubris. It is anthropomorphic in concept, as such, it is a form of a miracle. Can we ignore Maimonides’ admonition, “belief in an anthropomorphic God is worse than idolatry; the literal understanding of the biblical text is no excuse for this erroneous belief…”.An Associated Press poll found that 84% of Americans have faith in divine miracles, 79% believe in the reality of miracles described in the Bible, 63% have personal experiences with miracles or know of people who have, and 67% have prayed to God or a saint for a miracle, generally a cure or recovery for a loved one in a health crisis. Overwhelmingly, the poll showed, those who believe in miracles are Christians. Are Jews in America that far behind? I wonder. The scriptures depict a personal God, one to whom one can pray directly. Many Rabbis reinforce this feeling in their teachings. They seldom, if ever, interpret God in the modern vernacular. We repeat the Sh’ma, but never discuss what it stands for. Is it easier to preach to the ‘child’ rather than the ‘adult’? Is giving up a personal God (a warm and comforting cloak) too painful and traumatic? I’ve heard several Reform rabbis talk of miracles and in private conversation reaffirm their belief in those miracles. Doesn’t any miracle beget another? Where does it end? If we are to believe in miracles what makes Jewish miracles any better than Christian or any other creed’s miracles? If our conception of God is reduced to ‘my miracles are better than yours’, with all the angst involved, why should one remain Jewish?At the other end of the spectrum there are many secular Jews. Embracing modernism and on the leading edge of science, they no longer can conceive God as a divine person with human like (anthropopsychic) qualities. As a result, they commonly disavow their belief in a personal God and, lacking imagination or impetus to perceive the possibility of a new conception of God, they profess atheism. Their numbers have grown since the shock of the Holocaust – how could a just God allow such a tragedy? Some atheists, many Humanistic Jews, even carry their denial to the point where they believe that man, through science, will eventually control nature and understand all the mysteries of the universe. This belief is equivalent to raising man to the pantheon of the gods, which is just as anthropomorphic as the literal belief in scripture. Is it time for Judaism to truly give up the concept of a personal God? This question may well be disturbing to many. What is man's relationship to his God? If there is no personal God to pray to, will he never speak to us again? Are we being asked to loosen our hold on the Rock of Ages only to be swept away in a torrent of uncertainty? I submit we have always been in a torrent of uncertainty. When unexplainably bad things happen to good people we call it a mystery, ‘no one can know God’s ways’. What if the concept of a personal God is an illusion? What if there are no perceivable “God’s ways”? The answers to these conundrums may be in the Torah. Richard Elliott Friedman in his studies has found a hidden theme, a plot, in this remarkable document. Hidden, perhaps, because who would have looked for a unified theme in a book written over hundreds of years with scores of authors and editors? Depicted in “The Disappearance of God”, the relationship between humans and God changes through the course of the Bible. The walking talking God of Genesis who controls everything at the beginning, gradually relinquishes control to man. “As one progresses through the verses, there are fewer and fewer divine appearances, and ultimately none. All that remains of divine acquaintance in the latter books of the Hebrew Bible is the text of laws that God reveals to Moses. As Ezra reads that text publicly, the word of God takes the place of the acts of God. God has moved from the personal to the cosmic saying, ‘I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be.’ ”Commenting on this disappearance of God is not new. From a plaque in the Jewish Museum in Athens: “God is in exile from his creation, not as a consequence of evil but due to the very finity of the created universe… A year, month, day, hour are marked by moments of withdrawal by Jews to contemplate the origin of all phenomena and their relativism in time and space against the awesome unity of God…”What does this message mean? While the Torah can be interpreted literally, metaphorically, ethically, or mystically, each method leads to the same conclusion. We are on our own. We have been granted free will. We are responsible and answerable to ourselves, family, friends, society, mankind, and in a psychological and metaphysical sense to God. Starting with the Ten Commandments, Judaism has provided all the rules to guide us through the tortuous paths of life. It’s up to us to follow them. A SUGGESTIONSome 4000 years ago our people were the first to embrace monotheism. 1500 years later we completed our Torah and became ‘the people of the book’. Over the next 1500 years, through the commentaries, we established laws which have become the bedrock of Western society. Since then the Jewish people have produced gifted scientists and philosophers far out of proportion to our numbers and our ethics have been in the forefront of the emancipation of all peoples. It has been a remarkable history. Where do we go from here? Kaplan wrote “Judaism needs to be rethought in terms of the philosophy implicit in modern science”. Albert Einstein concluded, "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God". Max Dimont wrote “Jews in searching for a new survival script need new relevant Jewish symbols”. Shedding belief in a personal God by espousing a God of the cosmos could be a new relevant symbol. Many Jews (and non-Jews too) think this way but never articulate it and never ponder its power. Our history has shown us to be a leader in many philosophical things. Isn’t is time for Judaism - the theologians, rabbis and laity in concert - to once again steal the march by discarding all literal interpretation of the miraculous events of the bible, in fact, miracles of any sort, and by relinquishing all belief in a personal God? In so doing will we not bring the Sh’ma into the 21st century? Alan Sapowith La Jolla, November ‘08 BIBLIOGRAPHY/REFERENCESAbout half of this writing is mine, the rest has been excerpted from various sources. In order to repeat the thoughts of the Rabbis and scholars discussed I have copied sentences and paragraphs verbatim from the sources listed below. I hope that in copying, rearranging, or re-writing these data I have not changed or shaded their meaning. Those portions containing quotes are, as proffered, quotes. The interpretations are all mine, so is the main theme, and so are the errors.I make no claims as an author. Perhaps I have served more as a redactor. The sources are arranged in relative importance to this paper. “Choices in Modern Jewish Thought”, Eugene B. BorowitzDrawn on heavily, especially the discussions of Mendelssohn, Cohen, Baeck, and Kaplan “The Disappearance of God” changed to “The Hidden Face of God”, Richard Elliott Friedman “Who Wrote the Bible”, Richard Elliott Friedman "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought", Ernst Mayr, Harvard University, Scientific American July 00, pg 82-83, “The Arithmetics of Mutual Help”, Martin Novak, Robert May, Karl Sigmund, Scientific American, June 1995, Pg 76-81 “The Dynamics of Social Dilemmas”. Bglance & Huberman, Scientific American, March 04, Pg 76 “A Book of Jewish Concepts”, Philip Birnbaum “’Basic values in Jewish religion”, Mordecai Kaplan “Dynamic Judaism”, Mordecai Kaplan, by Emanual Goldsmith“The Jewish Reconstructionist Papers”, Mordecai Kaplan Encyclopedia Judaica, at UCSD “Jerusalem”, Moses Mendelssohn “Jews, God and History” Max Dimont “The March of Folly”, Barbara Tuckman George Will, SD Union Sept 1, 02 “Not only is the universe stranger than we know, it is stranger than we can know”, Scientific American Sept 99 pg. 89 Late in life Einstein concluded, "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God". Hawking's space-time continuum -early chapter time starts/ends with big bang/crunch “The four dimensions of paradise”, Rabbi Samuel Penner “Cracking the Code”, Jon Entine, Reform Judaism, Spring Issu
We have never lost any freedoms as a result of loosing wars and never will, anyone that thinks they could occupy this country would be a complete idiot, all we have to do is wait and the government will succeed in destroying the country and then who knows what will happen.
LEVITICUS 18:22
8-30-2008
If Leviticus ( "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.") had been directed by a supernatural all knowing "God" he would have known what we have observed over the years that there is no exact cutoff point between a man and a woman. We now know scientifically that there is a distribution (neither male or female, commonly called homosexual) between the sexes and in that distribution natural persons are neither male or female but with characterics of each. Leviticus was directed as the other writers of what we now call the Bible by his own observations and what HE thought was an abomination. Somehow he must have experienced the love for people of the same sex and the fact that they experienced a sexual act between the two people, otherwise he would have never written about those sexual acts. The all knowing God would have also known about the distribution and never called it an abomination, otherwise it would have looked like a mistake in the "creation". obviously this part of nature has been with us for a long time and the church can preach as much as they want about the abomination and it will do no good as with other irrational "ideas" they have.
As with all writings by man the personal influence that goes in the writings can cause other people to act on those writings and irrational decisions are made because of a need to BELIEVE. It is difficult sometimes to separate fact from fiction but that is the requirement of the thinking person and without that reasoning we are led astray from rational thinking. Take for example the president Bush a demonstrated IDIOT.
ROD GALLOWAY
1340 H ST.
RAMONA, CA. 92065
760 789 1333
In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox
Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and
cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following response is an
open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by a US resident, which was posted on the
Internet. It's funny, as well as informative:
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law.
I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge
with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual
lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states
it to be an abomination ... End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of
God's Laws and how to follow them.
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female,
provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine
claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify?
Why can't I own Canadians? 2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7.
In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her? 3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of Menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense. 4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing
odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the
odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them? 5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him
myself, or should I ask the police to do it? 6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination,
Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can
you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination? 7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect
in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have
to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here? 8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around
their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How
should they die? 9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves? 10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops
in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different
kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme
a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole
town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to
death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their
in-laws? (Lev. 20:14) I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable
expertise in such matters, so I'm confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging. Your adoring fan.
James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus, Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education University of Virginia
(It would be a damn shame if we couldn't own a Canadian :)
Bush, Rice Express Concern for Afghan, a muslim prosecution for changing to christianity
Last Updated:03-23-06 at 7:25AM
President Bush called on Afghanistan to respect the religious freedom of an Afghan citizen on trial for his life for converting from Islam to Christianity."We expect them to honor the universal principle of freedom," Bush said in a statement in Wheeling, W.Va., preceding a speech on Iraq. "I'm troubled when I hear, deeply troubled when I hear, the fact that a person who converted away from Islam may be held to account."While not demanding that the trial be stopped and the defendant released, Bush said he wanted to make sure that "people are protected in their capacity to worship."Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice followed up with a meeting with Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, whose government is an ally of the United States in the war on terror.She told him she was deeply troubled by the case and called the prosecution "contrary to universal democratic values," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.Rice also told Abdullah that those values include freedom of religion, which the United States fought for in Afghanistan and elsewhere, McCormack said.And she told the foreign minister that the case ran contrary to the Afghan constitution.The statements by Bush and Rice toughened the U.S. stance in a controversy that has spread beyond South Asia, evoking statements of concern, for instance, in Germany and Italy.On Tuesday, administration officials expressed respect for Afghanistan's sovereignty while also registering their concern over the case.The case involves a 41-year-old Afghan man, Abdul Rahman, who converted from Islam and was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian. The conversion is a crime under Afghanistan's Islamic laws.Abdullah made no statement after his meeting with Rice, which was not listed on her public schedule.Here for strategic talks, Abdullah said Tuesday he hoped "through our constitutional process there will be a satisfactory result." He did not say whether he thought the defendant would be found innocent.On Wednesday, the Afghan embassy responded to expressions of concern with a statement saying the Kabul government "is fully aware of and pursuing the best way to resolve Mr. Rahman's case judicially.""It's too early to draw a conclusion about the punishment," the statement said.But it said Rahman's mental fitness was being evaluated by the judicial system and that results may end the proceedings.Michael Cromartie, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said in a statement he had written to Bush to express concern about the trial and the threatened execution of Rahman.Cromartie told the president that the prosecutor had called Rahman "a microbe (who) should be cut off and removed from the rest of Muslim society and should be killed."The Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a statement calling for Rahman's release. "Religious decisions should be matters of personal choice, not a cause for state intervention," the Muslim civil liberties group said.
The laws of the land contradict the natural laws about human needs and wants.
Today nudity is prohibited in public places and showing parts of the body will result in arrest and imprisonment. You will also be tagged for life as an sex offender. Showing the natural parts of the body has become a crime, showing sexual intercourse in public is a crime, when that action is how we propagate the earth with mankind. It is ok to have pictures of the sexual intercourse something we incorporate into the Constitution as free speech. The very act is prohibited and the children must learn about it on the street and thru friends when they become of age that causes the hormones to rush towards reproduction.
Early in our history the common age for marriage was when the female munestrated and that was the time she could concept and have a child. Today that action will land you in jail and become a sex offender for life. Multiple marriges also was a common thing to do but many people have decided that the law must apprehend those that engage in that kind of practice and jail is the result for the offender.
WHAT IF THE WORLD DIDN’T HAVE RELIGION??
6-26-2007
Can you imagine what kind of a world it would be if we didn’t have religion?? We would grow up only knowing a realistic world, not the fantasy world religion puts us in soon after birth. Shortly after birth we learn to say prayers to an unknown “god”, blessing friends and relatives and asking for all the good things to be delivered for free. Realizing the good things are really delivered by the fictitious persons like the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, Santa Clause, and others in different religions than Christianity. When in trouble asking for good results, when the results are solely dependent on your own efforts and others in the real world.
Without religion it would be difficult to tell the difference between people only their appearance and I wonder if we would fight wars based on the appearance of others?
The taxes on people of religion are great when they have to support both religion and government. My taxes for government is considerably less than the 10% expected for religion and a lot of the government taxes is used to fight wars that are concerned about religion. The overhead would be reduced considerably and that money could go to improve the world situation.
When you live in a fantasy world facing reality is difficult to accept and other means are used such as drugs to face the realities of life.
----- An Obituary printed in the London Times........
"Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; life isn't always fair; and maybe it was my fault. Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when political correctness became the "in thing" and the well-intentioned but overbearing "Human Rights laws" were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate, teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch, and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition. Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Aspirin to a student but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault. Common Sense finally gave up the will to live after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust, his wife, Discretion, his daughter, Responsibility his son, Reason.
He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers: I know my rights, I want it now, someone else is to blame, and I'm a victim
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing."
And, I'm not even a Republican!
Date: Saturday, March 14, 2009, 10:31 AM
Here's the opinion piece from Margaret Bengs I referred to at our last meeting, I hope you enjoy it. Could we discuss including this piece somehow in an upcoming newsletter, on the website or even in the weekly newsletter to school parents? See you on the 31st!
Catholic schools swamped by secular tide
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By Margaret A. Bengs Special to The Bee
Published: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 - 12:00 am Page 19A Last Modified: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 - 7:49 am
The announcement that Loretto High School, the Catholic school that has educated Sacramento girls since 1955, will close in June – unless a newly launched effort by parents and the Diocese of Sacramento to save it succeeds – is a microcosm of the steady crumbling of our religious institutions under the weight of rampant secularism and economic strains.
Catholic school enrollment in the Diocese of Sacramento has now dropped eight years in a row and has been dropping nationally for decades.
We can no longer operate under the modern delusion that the weakening of our faith-based institutions will have no consequence on our public life. In fact, these institutions provide the guideposts that help us advance the common good and halt dysfunctions in the social order.
Catholic schools are islands of refuge in a sea of secularism that are helping us preserve our spiritual and moral heritage. The loss of such a school is the loss of a small community, but one that shapes the minds and hearts of its students in ways that will last a lifetime.
As a graduate of San Luis Rey Academy, a Catholic girl’s high school adjacent to Mission San Luis Rey, also now sadly closed, the images of innocence and respect for scholarship forever etched in my mind are so different from what many children in public school see today.
Instead of the below-knee, checkered blue and brown pleated skirts with crisp white blouses that we wore, in today's public schools, we see hip-hugging pants and purple hair.
Instead of nuns clothed in long black habits modeling service and selflessness, a local teacher is accused of sending lewd text messages with sexual photos to two students.
Public school students used to be exposed to themes of virtue and character. McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader, for example, taught in public schools a century ago, while not endorsing a particular religion, acknowledged, as did our nation's founders, the importance of religion to a civilized society. "Religion is a social concern," it stated, "not merely a private affair," for it is "the best support of the virtues and principles, on which the social order rests." Erase all thought of a supreme being from a community, it predicted, "and selfishness would absorb the whole man. Appetite, knowing no restraint, would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws." Since then, these lessons have been swept away with the modern judiciary-endorsed sterilization of public schools from teaching moral values.
Replacing faith-based solutions to community problems is now most often a government remedy. Yet, while government welfare and other social programs can offer material help, they cannot answer the deeper human needs. And their burdensome costs often deplete families of resources they would have had to meet the challenges themselves.
To those who believe we can divorce spiritual influences from the public square without consequence, let us ask: Are we better off today than we were in the 1950s, when Loretto was established, and when religious education and vocations were a stronger and more vibrant part of our community? When Hollywood portrayed the importance of religion to community life, and when a weekly program by Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen actually aired on mainstream media? One look at today's crime,
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 10:01:39 -0800 (PST)
To: undisclosed recipients:
Subject: Get On The Bus Time again... Can you help a child stay united with a parent?
Prison Ministry friends and familyOur first Team meeting is scheduled for Feb 27 th 10:00 @ the Rock Church Room 253. We will be going over the program and just like last year be nominating coordinators for each faucet of the event. For those of you not familiar with what GOTB(GET ON THE BUS) is here is a brief summary of some heart breaking facts. Here is your opportunity to really Do Something!Get On The Bus brings children and their guardians/caregivers from throughout the state of California to visit their mothers and fathers in prison. An annual event, Get On The Bus offers free transportation for the children and their caregivers to the prison, provides travel bags for the children, comfort care bags for the caregivers, a photo of each child with his or her parent, and meals for the day (breakfast, snacks on the bus, lunch at the prison, and dinner on the way home)— all at no cost to the children’s family. On the bus trip home, following a four-hour visit, each child receives a teddy bear with a letter from their parent and post-event counseling. Without this program it would be financially impossible for the families to make the trip.Children with a parent in prison are usually cared for by relatives, often grandparents. Many caregivers are unable to make the drive due to distance or expense. Get On The Bus offers a priceless opportunity––a mother’s touch, a father’s hug, a family photo, a private conversation and a connection with hope and healing.•An estimated 856,000 children in California have a parent currently involved in California’s adult criminal justice system, nearly 9% of the state’s children. •One in 5 of these children have witnessed their parent’s arrest.•Police and courts do not regularly inquire at the time of arrest or sentencing whether a prisoner has children. What happens to these kids .•60% of parents in state prison report being held over 100 miles from their children.•We believe that families are torn apart by the current policies of the criminal justice system leaving behind children who become the hidden victims of crime.•In 1999, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 54% of mothers and 57% of fathers in state prisons reported never having had a single visit from their children.•Children’s odds of delinquency increase dramatically when visits with their incarcerated parent are denied.•Children who are allowed regular visits with their incarcerated parent demonstrate better emotional and social adjustment; they can be assured they are loved and that their parents have not abandoned them by choice.•Reguleas far from the families of mothers and fathers in prison, and the children lack the means to visit their parents. As a result, more than half of the children with a parent in prison never see them. •We believe that all children have the right to speak with, see and touch their parent no matter where the parent is. The child still loves there mom and dad. •We believe that families and children are essential partners for rehabilitation and re-entry.•Therefore, GOTB believes that it is imperative to unite children with their parents in prison and create greater public awareness about their plight. I hope to see MANY of you there and with a willing servants heart!--Latisha Zamora(619) 210-3522 cellLuke 10:2 Then He said to them, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.Join us on Facebook! Look for "Rock Church Prison Ministryar visits between children and their incarcerated parent lower rates of recidivism for the parent and improves family reunification following the parent’s release.•Prisons are often located in isolated ar
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