Some of the things I run into online really get me shaking my head. I just this evening came across a Huffington Post offering that tried to scare me (and everyone else) into not using lemon wedges in my drinks because of all the microbes I might ingest. (Like the entire world and the air around us aren't loaded with such things!)
Come on, now. I do have an immune system that has been pretty damn efficient in protecting me from all manner of microbial dangers for nearly 80 years! You would shudder to see what I fell in and was drug through on that ranch I grew up on. under a microscope, it would be hard to tell where I begin and the microbes in all areas of my body leave off.
Studies have shown that babies who are exposed to more dirt and bacterial cultures are far healthier with much stronger immune systems, less asthma, etc. than those who are fanatically isolated from any possible contamination. Playing in the dirt, making mud pies, eating with garden soiled hands and any number of other things humans are prone to experience don't necessarily pose a threat. And don't companies make millions selling us yogurt and pills to get that "good" bacteria into our guts? I got the same thing drinking raw milk, eating butter churned from naturally soured cream and walking across the farmyard!
As an aside, when I was a ministerial assistant in New York, one of the more humorous members mentioned how careful they were to sanitize everything their first child consumed and came in contact with. He said things loosened up considerably with the second one and that the third one "ate with the dog." I wonder which one was the healthiest.
The article did mollify things toward the end, proving that they only chose the subject and title to get people upset and worried. Most of us will have an "ho hum" reaction, but the mentally unbalanced among us will run with it and create a multitude of problems for themselves and those close to them.
I like to write and influence the opinions of others, but let's use a little restraint lest we stir the pot of paranoia.
Monday, January 27, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
WHAT IF YOU'RE WRONG?
My, how chauvinistic we can be about our precious beliefs. It's been that way since time immemorial.
Egyptians believed in and stuck and hung for Horus and a host of companion gods, Greeks for Zeus and his family, Romans for Jupiter, Northern europeans for Thor, Odin, Freia, etc. In Canaan it was El Elyon and his sons, chief of which were Yahweh and Baal, along with the females Ashtoreth and, if I remember correctly, daughter Anath.
All those gods except Yahweh have ended up on the trash heap of history. He's still around and usually called Jehovah today.
If I dare to state that I don't believe in Jehovah and his rape begotten son, Jesus, people in this part of the world usually react with horror and blurt out something like, "What if you're wrong?" It doesn't occur to them that millions of sincere people are just as convinced that Allah is the real god. If you don't, how do you know you're not wrong? Are you wrong to reject Zeus or Thor or the host of Hindu gods millions of others sincerely believe in?
Everybody is an atheist when it comes to all other gods but their own. I just add their god to the list while they don't.
Egyptians believed in and stuck and hung for Horus and a host of companion gods, Greeks for Zeus and his family, Romans for Jupiter, Northern europeans for Thor, Odin, Freia, etc. In Canaan it was El Elyon and his sons, chief of which were Yahweh and Baal, along with the females Ashtoreth and, if I remember correctly, daughter Anath.
All those gods except Yahweh have ended up on the trash heap of history. He's still around and usually called Jehovah today.
If I dare to state that I don't believe in Jehovah and his rape begotten son, Jesus, people in this part of the world usually react with horror and blurt out something like, "What if you're wrong?" It doesn't occur to them that millions of sincere people are just as convinced that Allah is the real god. If you don't, how do you know you're not wrong? Are you wrong to reject Zeus or Thor or the host of Hindu gods millions of others sincerely believe in?
Everybody is an atheist when it comes to all other gods but their own. I just add their god to the list while they don't.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
WHERE DID CARING GO?
(From Faceboodk.)
I've been on a sharing roll this morning. So many good things appear on Facebook that it's often hard to choose which ones to share and how many to just like and move on.
I was touched by the dog hugging its benefactor in a state of relieved bliss. How often I've felt the same way when someone showed they really cared. All children know how much that means when you're so vulnerable and scared.
It's quiet here in the house. Phylllis is still sleeping. Soon, I'll take her coffee and inquire as to how she is feeling as that infection slowly leaves her body. I like being her protector and comforter. It's another purpose for my life.
We all, regardless of our genus or sex, need each other. Our society has lost much of that inate compassion during the last three decades or so. It's been supplanted by a hard boiled "fuck you" attitude that, sad to say, had much of its genesis in religion. It still puzzles me how something so supposedly benign and caring can be the source of so much hate and unconcern. I lived it for twenty years tied up in that cult and I see it on the news every day.
All I can do is keep on doing whatever I can in my little corner of the world and hang onto that stubborn optimism in the core of my being.
I've been on a sharing roll this morning. So many good things appear on Facebook that it's often hard to choose which ones to share and how many to just like and move on.
I was touched by the dog hugging its benefactor in a state of relieved bliss. How often I've felt the same way when someone showed they really cared. All children know how much that means when you're so vulnerable and scared.
It's quiet here in the house. Phylllis is still sleeping. Soon, I'll take her coffee and inquire as to how she is feeling as that infection slowly leaves her body. I like being her protector and comforter. It's another purpose for my life.
We all, regardless of our genus or sex, need each other. Our society has lost much of that inate compassion during the last three decades or so. It's been supplanted by a hard boiled "fuck you" attitude that, sad to say, had much of its genesis in religion. It still puzzles me how something so supposedly benign and caring can be the source of so much hate and unconcern. I lived it for twenty years tied up in that cult and I see it on the news every day.
All I can do is keep on doing whatever I can in my little corner of the world and hang onto that stubborn optimism in the core of my being.
Friday, January 24, 2014
RELIGIONS ARE ENEMIES OF DEMOCRACY
I happened on this statement by Bill Maher:
"It's impossible to worship superstition on Sunday or Saturday and just be a normal person every other day of the week."
It's so true of me while I was caught up in Armstrongism that it made me wince. I worshipped superstition with a fervor born of ignorance and the desperation to be among god's chosen elect that it defies all logic or reason. It's really one of the main things that's wrong with this nation and why we no longer are leading the world in any meaningful non-military and hegemonic way, especially where science, technology and social progress is concerned.
You can't bow down to a sociopathic cosmic dictator who has the right to dictate everything you think and do (or else) weekly, let it dictate the rest of the week everything you think and champion and function well in a secular democratic society. Something has to give.
What gives is individual rights to self-determination in thought and deed and societal equality. Religion is dictatorial and elite centered in every aspect of its reality. Herbert Armstrong made that very clear when he loudly maintained that democracy wasn't god's form of government.
The Pope would say the same thing and I know of no religious organization that doesn't countenance and seek for the absolute dictatorial dominance of their interpretation of "god's word." If you are going to champion what the Bible teaches, no other conclusion can be acceptable. Some are just more open and extreme about it than are others.
"It's impossible to worship superstition on Sunday or Saturday and just be a normal person every other day of the week."
It's so true of me while I was caught up in Armstrongism that it made me wince. I worshipped superstition with a fervor born of ignorance and the desperation to be among god's chosen elect that it defies all logic or reason. It's really one of the main things that's wrong with this nation and why we no longer are leading the world in any meaningful non-military and hegemonic way, especially where science, technology and social progress is concerned.
You can't bow down to a sociopathic cosmic dictator who has the right to dictate everything you think and do (or else) weekly, let it dictate the rest of the week everything you think and champion and function well in a secular democratic society. Something has to give.
What gives is individual rights to self-determination in thought and deed and societal equality. Religion is dictatorial and elite centered in every aspect of its reality. Herbert Armstrong made that very clear when he loudly maintained that democracy wasn't god's form of government.
The Pope would say the same thing and I know of no religious organization that doesn't countenance and seek for the absolute dictatorial dominance of their interpretation of "god's word." If you are going to champion what the Bible teaches, no other conclusion can be acceptable. Some are just more open and extreme about it than are others.
GOVERNMENTS TEND TO DEVOLVE
I don't spend much time on the Bible, but like many books, it contains some true principles and obsrvations. However, Benjamin Franklin came up more and better ones in his Poor Richard's Almanac, as far as I'm concerned.
The situation with governments going ape and oppressing the people they should be serving has existed throughout human history. How accurate it is is something I won't vouch for, but the account of Israel turning monarchial in I Samuel 8 often comes forcefully to my mind. I know no god actually said a damn thing, but the account of what Samuel is supposed to have said is very inciteful as to how human governments always devolve:
"This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants ... he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants (i.e. slaves)." (KJV)
No matter what form government takes, whether ecclesiastical or mundane, they all end up the same way with power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a powerful few. The masses end up impoverished and oppressed to lesser and greater degrees.
We'd made good progress after World War II while power was more evenly distributed through sane congresses and the power of checks like labor unions. That has all been craftily demolished by one subterfuge after another, begining with with dumb ass elitist Reagan and his cabal of rich power mongers.
Today, America has become a steadily ramped up hell hole of elitist and ecclesiastical oppression. Our wealth is squandered on unnecessary wars and welfare for rich corporations so the power of a few can be made manifest over the masses of serfs and slaves.
I fear this coup is beyond reversal. Welcome to the modern version of I Samuel 8.
The situation with governments going ape and oppressing the people they should be serving has existed throughout human history. How accurate it is is something I won't vouch for, but the account of Israel turning monarchial in I Samuel 8 often comes forcefully to my mind. I know no god actually said a damn thing, but the account of what Samuel is supposed to have said is very inciteful as to how human governments always devolve:
"This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants ... he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants (i.e. slaves)." (KJV)
No matter what form government takes, whether ecclesiastical or mundane, they all end up the same way with power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a powerful few. The masses end up impoverished and oppressed to lesser and greater degrees.
We'd made good progress after World War II while power was more evenly distributed through sane congresses and the power of checks like labor unions. That has all been craftily demolished by one subterfuge after another, begining with with dumb ass elitist Reagan and his cabal of rich power mongers.
Today, America has become a steadily ramped up hell hole of elitist and ecclesiastical oppression. Our wealth is squandered on unnecessary wars and welfare for rich corporations so the power of a few can be made manifest over the masses of serfs and slaves.
I fear this coup is beyond reversal. Welcome to the modern version of I Samuel 8.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
DEBATE DOESN'T WORK
This article points out very succinctly why I avoid getting into debates with any theist. I state what I have to state, and if they can't see it, they just can't see it, and I'm not going to frustrate myself trying to break through that wall of unreasonableness:
http://www.racehochdorf.com/essays/2014/1/11/the-tyranny-of-fundamentalist-language
The Tyranny Of Fundamentalist Language
www.racehochdorf.com
I have seen the question posed on Progressive Christian blogs and on numerous other websites, “Why is it impossible to debate a fundamentalist?”
http://www.racehochdorf.com/essays/2014/1/11/the-tyranny-of-fundamentalist-language
The Tyranny Of Fundamentalist Language
www.racehochdorf.com
I have seen the question posed on Progressive Christian blogs and on numerous other websites, “Why is it impossible to debate a fundamentalist?”
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
OBSCENE WEALTH
There's an article on Huffpost Business this morning which points out that 85 of the world's richest people own approximately the same amount of world wealth as the bottom half of the entire world population does.
I have absolutely no desire to keep people from getting rich from honest labor and effort. I'd dearly love to have a few hundrd thousand or a few million sitting in a bank account to tap any time I needed it. But, wealth like that described here comes only at the expense of impoverishing the bulk of one's fellow human beings.
I could say more, but anyone who's been following my Facebook page and my blog knows exactly what I mean and where I'm coming from. Useful things need doing and I'm going to go do a few of them.
I have absolutely no desire to keep people from getting rich from honest labor and effort. I'd dearly love to have a few hundrd thousand or a few million sitting in a bank account to tap any time I needed it. But, wealth like that described here comes only at the expense of impoverishing the bulk of one's fellow human beings.
I could say more, but anyone who's been following my Facebook page and my blog knows exactly what I mean and where I'm coming from. Useful things need doing and I'm going to go do a few of them.
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