STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

The following article was first published on http://hwarmstrong.com/wordpress/ about a month ago.  Since it ties in perfectly with the subjects I present on this site, I am reproducing it here.

I am appalled!

I am flabbergasted!

A new poll is out, showing that close to half the population (40%) of the supposedly most advanced nation on earth believes in creationism! Not just general creationism with “God” as first cause to set evolution in motion, but totally stupid “God did it in the last few thousand years” creationism.

The question as to how dumb the American people can be was answered by the last (2010) election and this poll!

In the recent election, the American electorate gave overwhelming support to some of the most ignorant and totally dumb people like at no other time in our nation’s history. I just can’t believe that a total “dumb ass” incompetent like Sarah Palin can be a serious contender as a presidential nominee in less than two years.

It has been stated by several historians that nations get the leaders they deserve. If we’re really that dumb, then we have what we deserve in power right now and our position as the top nation of the world will soon be over.

I mean it! I totally believe that the USA is most likely doomed! Just like ancient Rome!

We have the same situation of treasure draining wars and occupations coupled with a predominantly super rich ruling class that basically buys elections. Serving the needs of the nation comes in a far second to promoting themselves and the interests of their millionaire and billionaire cronies.

Our “leaders” don’t have the understanding, moral principles or the gumption to take the steps necessary to turn things around. True education and true science continue to get “short shrift” and are often ridiculed by little minds with set-in-concrete pro-superstition attitudes in high places.

We have become an anti-science, pro-mythology bunch of under-educated, rap-spouting, superstition-championing idiots! We’re careening down a precipitous blind curve oblivious to what’s happening with our eyes glued to a “plastic Jesus” on the dashboard!

An additional 38% of Americans think that evolution was guided by their God. That is a little less insane but still shows an appalling lack of reasoning power or education in some basic facts of history, geology, paleontology, etc.

It also shows a total lack of any study of comparative religion. All these people know is what they have been fed and carelessly accepted without ever delving into facts like our founding fathers did.

I tremble for the fate of my descendants when I see the state of education in this country. I realize, as did James Madison when he wrote, “The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty,” that we are in dire straits when school boards dictate what can be in textbooks based on a religious bias and ban the dissemination of the knowledge of great men like Thomas Jefferson.

All people have to do is read Thomas Paine’s Age of reason or go online to look up the quotes of men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, regarding religion to see that this nation wasn’t founded by men who could be present-day adherents to the “Tea Party” or the ultra-conservative Republican right. Here are two sites to check out: http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/washington.htm and http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/jefferson.htm.

Benjamin Franklin is well known for his pithy sayings in Poor Richard’s Almanac. They have become so ubiquitous that many people believe a lot of them come from the Bible. Being a born diplomat, he was much less vocal about his feelings on religion. He was a staunch Deist. Read his very pointed comments that have been preserved at this website: http://articles.exchristian.net/2002/03/ben-franklin-quotes.php.f

Anyone can easily google any number of our founding fathers to see what they really felt on this and other vitally important topics.

Paine’s book is available right here on The Painful Truth website.

People have been lulled to sleep and told the same old nonsense over and over to the point that they just accept it. Hitler realized that if you tell people lies often enough and loudly enough, they will start to believe. It’s a feel-good thing. They can’t be bothered to question and they certainly don’t want to risk going to “hell” by asking some simple questions or reading something “satanic” like an uncensored textbook that teaches that horrible “evulooshin.” Rhymes with “Rooshin,” ya know.

All they think they need or want is their plastic Jesus. He’s gonna come and save them for sure. Viva la Rapture! Funny. I’ve been backward and forward through that Bible, and I have yet to read anything in there that uses that word in any such context.

Weren’t there a few million Jews in Aushwitz and Bergen-Belsen, etc. with similar expectations? Where was that “interventionist” god all the countless thousands of times innocent people have been brutalized and slaughtered time and again throughout history? Often in worship of another concept of that supposedly same god! There were a lot of devout Christians in the Waffen SS. The monsters who flew planes into the twin towers were very passionate worshipers of Allah.

I fear it is too late. Everywhere I look, I see decline. I see my nation basically bankrupt but unwilling to stop the party for the rich and powerful, and many states and local jurisdictions are about to fold under unmanageable budgets. Our greatness has been squandered and sabotaged from within and the “barbarians” without are getting stronger, richer, better educated and more determined.

And, they own us!

The time to call a halt was decades ago. But, we were mesmerized into thinking that we would always be at the top of the heap, so we could party on like drunken sailors. I remember the cliches well: “Use other people’s money,” “Trickle Down,” “Greed is good,” “Tap your equity,” etc., etc., ad nauseum.

We thought we were really clever. Turns out, we were and are abysmally stupid!

WHAT IS "AGNOSTIC ATHEISM?"

In my profile, I state that I am an “agnostic atheist.” Some may find that a confusing way of identifying what I believe, so I thought I'd try to explain.

Thomas Paine uses the term “God” in his book but is clearly atheist in his thinking. He did not believe in any of the extant gods or religions of his time (he clearly and unequivocally states that he does not), and neither do I. In that sense, I am, as he was, an atheist.

I also realize, as I'm sure Paine did, that there had to be a beginning of all that we see; a beginning scientists refer to with the vague term, “big bang.”

Until recent times and the advent of quantum theory and mechanics, about the only thing human minds could come up with as a first cause was an anthropomorphized being, or beings, called a god or gods to explain the existence of existence.

Paine never heard of quantum theory or quantum mechanics or quantum anything. I'm sure something like evolution probably never entered his mind. People of his time who realized that the gods people believed in couldn't be real usually turned to Deism – the belief that a real god started everything but then took a hands off policy.

Even Darwin had a hard time accepting the possibility of such a thing as actual evolution for a good long while. He wrestled mightily with what facts and reason told him and what had been drummed into him from the time he was a babe in a cradle.

I just don't know what happened to start it all back there billions of years ago. So, I add “agnostic” to my definition of my basically atheist beliefs, because “agnostic” simply means, “I don't know.”

I am, however, certain that there was not a super-intelligent being in the general pattern of a human being (I'll have more to say about that soon, after the reference books I've ordered arrive) that just magically sprang into existence or existed for all eternity, with an intelligence and powers that would dwarf anything we can imagine; which being then created all that we see here on earth and throughout the cosmos.

If there should now exist what many refer to as “universal consciousness,” it has to be a manifestation of the energy involved in and constituting the “big bang” and the subsequent evolution of the universe and life. It too would have had to evolve. It may be no more an actuality than the gods people have invented.

My mind is open to theories and postulates. It no longer is closed and padlocked by “faith.” As an agnostic, I will question until the day I depart this mortal life.

As far as the “gods” people prate about and get all emotional and hostile about, they do not exist, and those who promote them have nothing but “hearsay” to present in their defense.

Hearsay gets nowhere in a court of law, and it gets nowhere with me.  Not anymore.

Why This Blog?

Who am I and why this blog?

I am a survivor of cultism, now in my seventies, who wants to share his accumulated experiences and the lessons he has learned with whomever he can.

I opted out of the cultic organization (The Worldwide Church of God) that had monopolized my life and thinking for over 20 years in 1974-75.

In the intervening years, I have progressed in fits and spurts to the relative stability of being an agnostic atheist who believes in none of the gods and religions currently extant in the world.

I pray to no god.

I bow to no priesthood.

I think for myself.

In the past year or so, I have been a regular contributor to The Painful Truth blog at: http://www.hwarmstrong.com/, and have twice been its guest editor. There is a dedicated section of my articles on this site: http://www.hwarmstrong.com/al_dexter.htm, which includes my autobiographical book, Believing the Unbelievable -- Into and Out of Fanaticism.

I first tried to publish and market this book on my own and spent several hundred dollars on the project only to come up against the barrier facing all authors. There are just too many books out there. There is one absolutely true statement in the Bible; “...of making many books there is no end” Eccles. 12:12. After Gutenberg, that became even more of a truism. And, getting enough promotion going to be successful is virtually impossible. So, I put it online and forgot about being a successful author in the commercial market.

Many people no longer buy books. They cost a lot. They take up a lot of space, and most of them sit on a shelf or coffee table and are never really read. Most information one wants can now be found by a simple web search – free. On a whim, I recently bought a book on Alexander Hamilton at a yard sale. It looks like it was never read, and, you guessed it, I haven't read it either. I have lots of partially read books in my library.

The internet has been a boon to those with a message. Finally, an affordable vehicle with worldwide potential open to anyone who has the ability to put their thoughts in writing.

One has to develop a lot of courage and go through much emotional upheaval to come to the place in which I now stand. I'm basically right back where I started as a skeptical teenager, before the siren song of Herbert Armstrong's hypnotic voice and writings overwhelmed my youthful naivete and turned me into a goose stepping fanatic akin to the Hitler youth of the previous generation.

I count myself a free thinker in the mold of Thomas Paine. Paine is revered as one of our great thinkers and a founding father. Many of those who extol him have never read his book, The Age of Reason. If they had, they would have serious questions about the current push to paint the United States of America as a Christian nation. You can find his book here: http://www.hwarmstrong.com/age-of-reason-00.htm.

Paine was an outright avowed atheist!

Others, like Benjamin Franklin (who himself stated the fact), Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, were more in tune with Deism, the belief that a god started it all and then took a hands off policy. Prior to Darwin, that was a logical conclusion to many educated people.

Thomas Paine is no longer around to counter the lies of the religious right, so I've decided to be one of those who stand in for him.

Hence, the title of this blog.